A few lines from Newport thus speak of the late winter: "Our evergreens look sadly brown and red, but I think they are not seriously injured. This has been the most severe winter ever known at Newport".

A new work on French fruits, called "Le Jardin Fruitier du Museum on Iconographie de toutes les Especes et Varietes d'Arbres Fruiters cultives dans cet etablissement, avec leur description, leur histoire, leur synonymic, etc," is announced in Paris, from the pen of the eminent botanist, M. Decaisne. It is to appear monthly, in small quarto, each number containing four colored plates, price five francs. Pears are to be taken first. M. Decaisne announces his intention to sweep clean away such vulgar (banale) names as Beurre, colmar, Bergamot, which he says have lost all meaning, and he will propose one name only for each sort of pear, to the exclusion of the crowd of names now producing chaos everywhere. Let us hope that the intended revolution will not end in worse confusion still.

At a late London horticultural exhibition, there was a large piece of the root of Aralia papyri/era, which Mr. Fortune brought over to show how the Chinese make their rice paper from it; but why they call it rice paper, is best known to themselves. The pithy part of the root is so thinly sliced by the Chinese as to resemble paper, which they make into ornaments, and which they sell much cheaper than our cheapest paper. There was also a plank of Beech, to show how the soft and inferior woods may be impregnated with a solution, to render them as durable as the best Oak. Some fine drawings of new Orchids, from Mr. Linden, were on the table.