able to use their specific gravity as a fulcrum, by means of which they present their bodies and outstretched wings and tails at various angles to the wind, and literally sail. How often when becalmed on southern seas, when not a breath of air was stirring, have I seen the albatross, the petrel, and the Cape-pigeon, resting on the water, or rising with difficulty, and only by the constant action of their long wings able to fly at all! But when a breeze sprang up they were all life and motion, wheeling in graceful circles, now presenting one side, now the other to view, descending rapidly with the wind, and so gaining velocity to turn and rise up again against it. Then, as the breeze freshened to a gale, the petrels darted about.... poising themselves upon the wind with as little effort as a man balances himself upon his feet."
An Aged Pelican.—Land and Water contains an interesting "obituary notice" of Jack the Pelican, for upward of forty years an inhabitant of the Dublin Zoological Gardens. This line specimen of the genus Anser was presented to the gardens in 1831, being then full grown, and supposed to be seven or eight years old. Jack was generally about the first specimen which was introduced, or rather introduced himself, to the notice of visitors, as he was seldom shut up in a cage, but walked or waddled about where he pleased. He usually treated strangers with sovereign contempt, hardly deigning to get out of their road; but when seized, and his beak opened to show his curious little cleft tongue, which lay at the bottom of the pouch, under the bill, his eye, usually a splendid ruby, or rather carbuncle color, got red as a coal, with anger, at the indignity. His plumage was always in the most beautiful order and the most brilliant white, except about the head, where the soft, downy hackles assumed a pinky hue. Curiously enough, he never went into the water, except occasionally for the purposes of ablution, when he would duck and wash himself all over; then, returning to land, squeeze the water out of his feathers with his bill, and stand in the sun to dry. But he never seemed to swim for pleasure or to fish, in which respect he differed from the three junior members of his tribe, also locked up in the gardens. Another peculiarity of his was that he would never touch any food but fish. The others soon learned to eat and relish horse-flesh on occasion, but Jack stood out stanchly, and fish, and fish only, he would have, at whatever cost, all attempts at deceiving him being in vain. Jack knew his friends and enemies well, and when he first came, and until the death of his original owner, a Mr. Egan, it was absurd to see the way he attached himself to that gentleman, running to meet him at the gate, and never leaving his side. For some time before his death he subsisted on a stimulating diet of live eels and whiskey-punch.
Species of Dicotyledonous Plants.—The number of that great section of flowering plants which, when the seed sprouts, give off two ledons, or embryonal leaves, is shown in the "Prodromus" of De Candolle, recently finished in seventeen volumes, to be very large. Not counting the eminent men that have given earnest work on it as specialists, it has had the conduct of three generations of De Candolles, the grandfather, Augustin, who dying bequeathed it to his son Alphonse, who in like manner left it to his son Casimir. The first and the second wrought together for years, as did also the second and the third. The work describes 5,134 genera and 58,975 species, which is probably not more than one-half the number of species of dicotyledonous plants existing. The principal natural orders described are:
| Genera. | Species. | |
| Compositæ | 911 | 8,561 |
| Leguminosæ | 288 | 3,853 |
| Rubiaceæ | 225 | 1,888 |
| Euphorbiaceæ | 191 | 8,272 |
| Scrophulariaceæ | 176 | 1,879 |
| Umbelliferæ | 160 | 1,016 |
| Acanthaceæ | 154 | 1,481 |
| Asclepiadaceæ | 184 | 1,013 |
| Labiatæ | 122 | 2,401 |
| Cruciferæ | 100 | 988 |
| Solanaceæ | 65 | 1,725 |
The most numerous genera are as follows:
| Species. | |
| Solanum | 915 |
| Euphorbia | 751 |
| Senecio | 601 |
| Croton | 461 |
| Phyllanthus | 447 |
| Erica | 429 |
| Salvia | 410 |
| Peperomia | 889 |
