206 



miles from Burlington, Vt.) some bones were found in a fine 

 adhesive blue clay : an anterior extremity, portions of a head, 

 some vertebrae and ribs, of an animal which Mr. Thompson 

 thought must be either cetacean or saurian. A careful examina- 

 tion satisfied him that from the convex surfaces of the vertebrse, 

 and the impossibility of any but a vertical motion, the animal 

 must have had a horizontal tail ; he afterwards found the blow 

 holes, and was sure that it belonged to the whale family : one 

 bone, which was very hard to place, was found by Prof. Agassiz 

 to be the vomer. Mr. Thompson thinks it is not an extinct 

 species ; it resembles very much Cuvier's Arctic Whale (Ba- 

 luga ?) if it is not this very species. It was found one mile east 

 of Lake Champlain, sixty feet above the level of the Lake, and 

 one hundred and fifty above the level of the sea ; the soil here is 

 of stratified clay and sand, containing many marine shells ; some 

 of which were exhibited, though broken ; Sanguinolaria, &c. The 

 clay was not here stratified, however, and was so soft that if it had 

 been so deposited the stratification would have disappeared ; the 

 bones were found in a kind of quagmire, eight feet below the'sur- 

 face ; below the clay were rounded pebbles ; whether they were 

 imbedded in it or not he was unable to say ; in the clay were also 

 found vegetable remains, reeds, &;c. near the animal, as if it had 

 been buried in a reedy swamp. The greater part of the cra- 

 nium was found, one half of the lower jaw, most of the vertebrse, 

 (forty-three,) both scapulse, a humerus and forearms, one long 

 rib, anterior rib, ribs in pieces, hyoid bone, sternum (very large,) 

 some of the teeth, and bones of the ear. 



Prof. Agassiz read a paper on the circulation and diges- 

 tion in the lovi^er animals, showing that the circulation in 

 the Invertebrata cannot be compared to that of the Ver- 

 tebrata. 



Instead of the three conditions of chyme, chyle, and blood, 

 which the circulating fluid of the Vertebrata undergoes, the blood 

 of that class of the Invertebrata, which he had particularly 

 studied, the Annelida, is, according to Wagner, simple chyle, 

 colored chyle ; the receptacles of chyle in different parts of the 

 body are true lymphatic hearts like those found in the Verte- 

 brata : this kind of circulation is found in the Articulata and 



