152 Zoological Society. 



lets of water containing iron and salts in solution. Near Hunter's 

 Path are seven beds of anthracite ; the laminar and slaty rocks be- 

 longing to the great transition clay-slates repose on compact sono- 

 rous argillaceous limestone, and considerable beds of quartz occur 

 in the midst of the slate formation ; this coast, therefore, seems to 

 be very analogous to that of Bideford : it is desirable to ascertain 

 whether the beds of anthracite are here also accompanied by im- 

 pressions of plants, and whether they can be identified with those of 

 the independent coal districts. 



The distinctness of the Bideford section, and the great ex- 

 perience which Mr. De la Beche possesses in geological surveying, 

 make it highly improbable, I think, that the plants which he has 

 presented to us can belong to any other formation than that to 

 which he has referred them : that the same fossils, vegetable as well 

 as animal, are confined to one particular epoch, and cannot be found 

 in more than one part of the general series, are presumptions, which 

 if countenanced, as to a certain extent they are, by limited expe- 

 rience, more enlarged experience may not unnaturally be expected 

 to overthrow, unless indeed we choose to suppose, amid all the ob- 

 scurity that surrounds us, that our knowledge has already reached a 

 maximum, and that nothing more can ever be visible than that which 

 we have been accustomed to see ; but the case which Mr. De la 

 Beche has stated is not altogether a new case ; it does not even con- 

 tradict our present experience. Coal measures, with their usual 

 plants, have been before found in undoubted grauwacke at the 

 Bocage in Calvados, and you have heard, from one of my pre- 

 decessors, that they occur in the same relative position at Mag- 

 deburg; that they occur in sandstone beds that alternate with 

 mountain limestone in our own country ; and that on the southern 

 flank of the Alps they had been discovered by M. Elie de Beau- 

 mont in beds of the age of lias. 



[To be continued.] 



ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



January 27. — Extracts were read from a Letter addressed to the 

 Secretary by J. B. Harvey, Esq., Corr. Memb. Z.S., and dated Teign- 

 mouth, January 22, 1 835. It was accompanied by a large collection of 

 Shells from the south coast of Devonshire, and by specimens of Echi- 

 nodermata and Crustacea from the same coast, which the writer pre- 

 sented to the Society. It was also accompanied by drawings of a 

 large specimen of Caryophyllia Smithii, now living in Mr. Harvey's pos- 

 session : the drawings represent the animal shortly after feeding, 

 when it is expanded sufficiently to contain the food, extending rather 

 above the level of the coral and raised in the middle ; and also as it 

 appears three or four hours after having been fed, when it expands 

 itself to the fullest extent, and ejects, in the form oiflocculi, the crude 

 undigested matter. 



A Note was read from the Secretary of the United Service Mu- 

 seum, accompanying several skins of Birds transmitted for exhibi- 

 bition by direction of the Ornithological Sub-Committee of that 



