The heat and brilliancy of the sunshine render it extremely difficult, we are told, to preserve collections in natural history. All the water drunk here is _rain water_. The butter, fruit, and vegetables of Syracuse are, in the month of May at least, bad, very bad; but its _Muscat_ wine, its _Hybla_ honey, and its fish, are all of superior quality. The honey of that hill needs not our praise, ----"quae nectareis vocat ad certamen Hymetton, Audax Hybla, favis." For ourselves, after tasting the confection of the Attic as well as of the Sicilian bee, we know not which is the greater artist, or which operates on the finer material; but the _best_ honey in Europe, in our opinion, comes from the apiaries of Narbonne. A CONSULTATION. We had given advice, and were preparing to go, when another candidate comes forward, and, with suitable gesticulation, _so_ placed his hands that we could not help saying, "Liver, eh?" "_Eccelenza_, si!" "Dopo una febbre?" "_Illustrissimo_, si!"--Folk now beginning to wink approvingly at our sagacity, we were looking exceeding grave, when a pair of Sicilian eyes set in a female head put us quite out by evidently taking us for a conjurer, and so setting at once our ethics, our pathology, and our Italian dictionary at fault. Still the surgeon congratulates the room on the "_lumi_" brought to it by the strange doctor, approves of the prescription, and corroborates our opinion that the "Signore _Don Jacomo_" _Somebody_ was the incontestable possessor of a "_flogose chronica del fegato!_" We now said we must go; and _two_ children ran for our hat, the man with the liver kisses our hand, others seize our coat-skirts, and the guide, Jack Robertson, carries the mace and leads the way, and puts himself at the head of the procession homewards; and glad were we to escape the embarrassment of curtsies and courtesies, to which we are unused, and far too extravagant ones to admit of reply. Come! the best of fees is a poor man's gratitude; but from poor or rich, at home or abroad, it is seldom that medical men walk off so magnificently. EXCURSION TO EPIPOLAE.