Observations on the state of zoology in Europe, as regards the vertebrata / Translated for the Ray Society, by H.E. Strickland.

  • Charles Lucien Bonaparte
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on the state of zoology in Europe, as regards the vertebrata / Translated for the Ray Society, by H.E. Strickland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    iind in a valuable work of the geological Professor Catullo, is a good list of the Vertehrata of that province. Crossing the Adriatic, we see even the semi-barbarous Mol- davia, establishing, under the patronage of her enlightened Hospodar, a natural history society, already rich in facts and specimens. Nor is this wonderful, in an age when the Tartar Emperor of China was enrolled in the register of the Academy of Brussels. Athens, and the Ionian Islands, also nobly strive to cul- tivate the natural sciences in those countries. Malta has seen the publication of a good Catalogue of the Fish which live around her coasts ; and that of the Birds, enriched with notes on their manners, is in preparation by Signor Antonio Schembri. Sicily, more devoted to these sciences than the continental parts of the kingdom, beholds, on all sides, the growth of new societies, new journals, and new museums. You all know, gentlemen, the name and the activity of the Accademia Gio- enia of Catania. Messina is distinguished among the Sicilian cities by Luigi Benoit and Anastasio Cocco. The latter con- tinues to throw light, in every way, on the Fish of his own country, as is fully shown by his articles in periodical works, to which I may add the epistolary correspondence with which he obligingly honours me. Benoit has published the Ornito- logia Siciliana, a truly useful little work, especially in Sicily, although it does not equal the expectations of those who looked for an original work on the Habits of Birds, rather than a repetition of other authors, who were frequently defective in points where it behoved him to have set them right. Naples being the city in which the somewhat limited zoo- logical science of the continental part of the kingdom seems to be concentrated, has lately beheld the formation of a society of young cultivators of natural science, which has already ]n‘oduced several useful works, and given promise of more. Dr. Oronzio Costa, its founder, who has undertaken a journey to France and Britain, has given us some new numbers of his Fauna del Regno di Napoli, so conveniently divided into monographs, which, if of but small interest as regards Mam- * 38