f eleven thousand feet above the sea's level, encloses an
innumerable multitude of testacea: and Humboldt found sea-shells among
the Andes, fourteen thousand feet above the level of the ocean. At
Touraine, on the Continent, is a bed of shells which extends nearly
twenty-seven miles, having a depth of twenty feet. Mount Bolca contains
upwards of one hundred species of fish from the four quarters of the
earth, and collected together in one immense assemblage."

(_To be continued._)

* * * * *

THE NATURALIST.

* * * * *

NOTES UPON NOTES.

We abridge the following from a few Horticultural Notes on a Journey
from Rome to Naples, in March last, contributed to that excellent work,
the _Gardeners' Magazine_, by W. Spence, Esq. F.L.S.

_Italian Inn._--Mr. Spence says, "Our rooms at the inn at Capua, where
we slept, opened on a terraced garden, with orange trees, vines trained
on arched trellises, marble fountains, &c., which, for ten shillings
expense, might have been made very gay and attractive; but all was
forlornness and disorder, the beds untrimmed, and the walks littered
with dirt. Two magnificent plants of Opuntia vulgaris, which flanked one
of the windows, the waiter said, were planted there '_per pompa_' (for
pomp's sake); a motive, unfortunately, so often the leading one in
Italy, without any regard to the humbler ones of neatness and order."

_Pontine Marshes._--Mr. Spence observes "the desolate aspect attributed
to these twenty-four miles of the road between Rome and Naples is one of
the many exaggerations which prevail with regard to Italy." He describes
the surface as dead-flat, with occasional portions covered with reeds,
or overflowed with water, giving the whole a fenny character, yet, as
happily, there are no pollard willows, and the road runs the whole way
between two rows of tall elm trees, the general effect to the eye is not
offensive, and far less repulsive than some parts of Holland or
Lincolnshire.

_Italian Landscapes._--The absence of fine full-grown trees is the great
defect of landscape scenes in Italy, where you sometimes travel a
hundred miles (as in Lombardy) without setting eyes on a tree that has
not been pollarded or lopped.

_Palming._--In the north of Italy palm-trees are cultivated, to sell
their leaves to the Romish churches for Palm-Sunday.

_Italian Climate._--The true Italian climate is confined to a v