MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. 341 



4. S. coronopifolia — Scapo siniplici, foliis radicalibus breviore ( Leonto- 

 don coronopifoHum, Desf. ! Fidelia 9, Schulz, 1834). 



GEOLOGY. 



On the Head of a Fossil Camel found in the Freestone in 

 HE Himalayas — Up to this time, says M. de Blainville, those who have 

 been most occupied in collecting all that has been done and published on the 

 fossil remains of mammifera have never described any which have been as- 

 certained to belong to the Quadrumana, or to the Camels in the ruminating 

 order, animals, in fact, which seem to be confined within well-marked limits. 

 It is true that Bojanus, having purchased of a merchant three molar teeth of 

 a ruminating animal, which he was assured had been found in Siberia, with 

 the teeth of a Mastodon, thought they belonged to a species of the Camel 

 family, and formed accordingly, on account of some slight differences, a genus 

 under the name of Merycotherium. It is also known that M. Marcel de Serres 

 forwarded, some years ago, to Cuvier, the drawing of a portion of a femur, 

 which he imagined to be that of a Camel ; but, even supposing the other 

 bones to have belonged to a Camel, it is not certain that they were really 

 fossil. At present, it may be considered very doubtful whether they were 

 fossil bones of a Camel. It is no longer the case that, when a skull is dis- 

 covered nearly entire, it is impossible to refer it to the Dromedary or Camel 

 with one hump, as is proved by the drawing M. de Blainville placed before 

 the Academie des Sciences Naturelles., and by the extract from a letter of Mr* 

 Henry Durand, an officer in the service of the East India Company, ad- 

 dressed, on the 14th of April last, to his brother, and which was transmitted 

 to me by the latter. This skull was found in a very hard freestone, or sand- 

 stone, obtained, doubtless, like the building stone of India, along the lower 

 Himalayas. 



The Academy will perceive, continues M. de Blainville, by the lecture I 

 shall have the honour of delivering, that in the same places has been disco- 

 vered the head of a mammiferous animal intermediate between the genera 

 Anoplotherium and Palceotherium, of the vicinity of Paris, but of which Mr. 

 Henry Durand has, unfortunately, not sent the drawing ; and, lastly, a tooth 

 of a species of Mastodon, which closely resembles Mastodon angusiidens, and 

 which, if this resemblance were perfect, would be found in three divisions of 

 the world, Europe, Asia, and America. — Annales des Sciences Naturelles, No- 

 vember, 1836. 



MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. 



On the Rise and Decline of Art In A. W. Schlegel's Lectures on 



Dramatic Literature occurs the following passage : — " Perfection in art and 

 poetry may be compared to the summit of a steep mountain, where a weight 

 that has been rolled up cannot long maintain itself, but immediately rushes 

 down the other side, without stopping until it ha^ reached the bottom. In 



