282 REPORT OF SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS. 



work — "Paleontology of Southern Russia." Though Sir Roderick Murchison 

 expressly states, in his "Geology of European Russia," that Russia, from the 

 nature of its surface, does not offer the geologist very abundant stores of 

 fossil remains, M. de Nordmann has found, during a residence of seventeen 

 years on the shores of the Black Sea, in the environs of Odessa, as well as 

 in the tertiary strata of Bessarabia, fossil remains which in richness equal 

 those of Germany, France, and England. The part already published of this 

 work, which has in addition an atlas of twelve plates in folio, for which M. 

 Nordmann has himself executed the drawings, contains a complete monograph 

 of Ursus Spelcens, and Odessanus. The bones are drawn of the natural size. 

 Amongst those to which attention should be especially directed, are the first 

 or milk teeth, and the os hyoides. In confirmation of what M. M. Cuvier, 

 Gold fuss, Wagner, and Middendorff have remarked, relating to the Bear of 

 the Caverns, M. de Nordmann differs in opinion with M. de Blainville, and 

 endeavours to show that the Bear of the Caverns cannot be considered as 

 belonging to the same species as the living Bear. By way of comparison, 

 M. de Nordmann had at his command a very large skull of the Ursus fer ox. 

 The second number contains the genus Felis and Hyaena spelceus, and in the 

 genus Cants a new species, Canis meridionalis, from the diluvian earth of 

 Odessa; the genus Thalassictis, the Mustelidce, and Lutra pontica, besides 

 Rodents and Solipedes, among which M. de Nordmann distinguishes several 

 different species. 



August 30th. — Organ of Hearing in Insects. 



M. Lespes read a "Memoir upon the Auditory Organs of Insects." From 

 this interesting paper we learn that some little openings observed by Erichson, 

 on the horny covering of the antennae, and which are closed by a membrane, 

 form these organs. They are the same, but of much smaller dimensions, as 

 the auditory apparatus of the Decapod crustaceans, which are also placed 

 upon the antennse. 



M. Joly read "Studies upon the Diseases of Silkworms, and upon 

 the Colouring of the Cocoons by the Food." 



As some scientific, men have studied this subject for the first time, and 

 perhaps have been led away by the respect shown to opinions expressed by 

 illustrious academicians, M. Joly positively asserts, with the commissioners of 

 the institution, that there is no direct relation between the state of the leaf 

 and the diseases of Silkworms. The author reviews different morbid phenomena 

 which he has remarked in Silkworms attacked with the epidemic, and which 

 have been before observed by all those who have studied this subject for 

 some years. Thus he has seen moults effected with difficulty; the skin of 

 the head and of the rest of the body partly remaining, without the worms 

 being able to cast it off, closing their mouth and anus; the accumulation of 

 alimentary matter in the stomach, swelling out enormously the anterior part 

 of these sickly worms; the decomposition, more or less, of the coatings of 

 the intestine, the gangrenous spots, the infusoria which we have noticed some 

 years ago, in the blood of the affected worms, the chemical reactions of this 



