32. Mortality among Leeches during Storms.-That atmospheric changes have a remarkable influence upon leeches, is a well established fact. In 1825, M. Derheims of St. Omer, ascribes the almost sudden death of them at the approach of, or during storms, to the coagulation of the blood of these creatures, caused by the impression of the atmospheric electricity. This opinion, which at that time was the result of theory, he confirmed, in the month of March last, by direct experiment,-Ferussac's Bul.

33. Pinite found in the Granite in the Environs of Heidelberg, by M. Blum, Zeitsch. für Mineralogie.'-The author gives a very detailed description of the pinite found in the granite near Heidelberg, comparing it to that of Auvergne and of Saxony, and dwells much on the different varieties of this mineral found in many different localities.

At the end of this memoir is a translation of an unpublished article of a Swedish journal, on a new species of mineral, under the name of Pyrargillite. This substance was found at Helsingfors, in Finland. It contains 15.8 per cent. of water, of an odour and savour that was bitter, without a trace of acid, much alumine, a little silex and magnesia, and a trace of phosphoric acid. It differs from Cordierite by being less hard, in that respect being intermediate between calcareous and fluor spar; from Fahlunite, by the same character, and its specific gravity of 2.505; from pinite, by this last character, and by its splitting with heat.

34. Description of the Spiricella, a new genus of fossil shells. By M. Rang, Bulletin d'Hist. Nat. de Bordeaux.'-This fossil, of which M. Rang thinks right to make a new genus, under the name of Spiricella, belongs to the tertiary formation of Bordeaux. Its characters are: shell much flattened, elongated, arched, with sharp margins; summit spiral, hetercstrophe constructed horizontally, situated behind and to the left, open on its inferior face; an indistinct impression, but occupying particularly the posterior half of the shell, where it appears nearly parallel to the margin.

Observtion.-The animal was certainly much larger than its shell.

35. Belemnites.-M. Raspail, an eminent French naturalist, after an accurate investigation of 250 belemnites from the mountains of Provence, has discovered that belemnites are not, as geologists usually suppose, the shells of animals, but cutaneous appendages of a marine animal, perhaps allied to the echinodermata, but which are now extinct. In the number for February of the Annales des Sciences d'Observation, a journal edited by M. Raspail, that gentleman has given the following synoptical table of his classification of these interesting objects :

36. Temperature of the Sea at different Depths-M. Lenz, the natural philosopher who accompanied the last Russian expedition round the world, made a series of observations on the temperature of the ocean at different depths, which have not as yet been laid before the public. The following are the results:—

We may remark that these observations, executed with every precaution necessary to ensure extreme accuracy, were made at greater depths than any hitherto attempted, Irvine having reached only 683 fathoms, and Péron 351.

37. Vegetating Fungus found in the Stomach of a Cod. Cabilian Strom. Morhua, Lin.-A French naturalist relates, that a fisherman brought him three pebbles, about the size of the first joint of a large thumb, on which were implanted by adhesion (empatement) plants and rudiments of plants, of a fucus kind, which was identified as the fucus confervoides, described by Bertolini, in his Amonitates Italiæ.' On one of the three stones was found an unique plant of considerable size, and nearly two feet in length, in active vegetation. Its colour was a deep bottle-green, except in one part, which formed the ramified summit, and which extended by the "arriere bouche" of the animal; this part, nearly two inches long, was transparent, of a pale violet-red, brittle, and more swollen than the lower

branches, which are green, flexible, and sufficiently tenacious; above a second stone, a plant two-thirds shorter than that on the first stone, was growing. To this was attached a plant about three inches long, to the two sides of which, and at from one and a half to two lines distance, two adhesions, not much smaller than that of the principal plant, were visible, and from which issued, in the shape of points bent back into hooks, and two lines in length, the rudiments apparently of two new plants. Another adhesion placed laterally, and of less extent, bore, as the germ of a third plant, a straight point, one line and a quarter in length. Opposed to the plant which was developed, and in the direction of the length of the stone, was the germ of a fourth plant, two lines long, and also bent into a hook. The two other stones had no similar germs of new plants, but they might have been detached without leaving any traces behind; drying produced the spontaneous separation of the others, and the plant itself then came off with the least touch; the place it had occupied could not then be discovered. The method of attachment resembled an adherence, by excluding the air. One of the stones was of gneiss with amphibole, another of gneiss only, the third of a sort of quartz. One of them was found in the curvature of the stomach of a cod, the two others in the large diameter of it. All adhered strongly to the substance of the stomach, and were obliged to be cut out. This fucus then can grow and spring from its seed, whatever that may be, in the stomach of a cod-fish; also, its force of vegetation prevails over the digestive force of the animal, unless it be that the fish, being entirely carnivorous, does not digest herbs. In one only, according to the testimony of the whole body of our fishermen, a piece of wood, the size of a man's fist, was found imbedded in the substance of the stomach of a cod.