72 



30^ I cannot say that it went to another cloud, but that 

 would most likely be so, as my attention was taken up 

 watching the progress of the electric ball. 



E. W. BiNNEY, V.R, F.R.S., said that shortly after the 

 meeting of the Society on the 21st January last, when he 

 exhibited the singular fossil plants, which were quite new 

 to him at the time, and which he thought would have to be 

 placed in a new genus, he had received excellent transverse 

 and longitudinal sections of similar specimens from Professor 

 Renault of Cluny, which were if possible in a more beautiful 

 state of preservation than those found in the carboniferous 

 strata of Lancashire. On the 4th February Professor W. C. 

 Williamson, F.R.S., stated that these specimens were the 

 branches or stems of the well-known genus Asterophyllites, 

 and he had communicated his views to the Royal Society 

 so early as November, 1871, wherein he expressed his 

 opinion " that Asterophyllites is not the branch or foliage of 

 a Calamite, but an altogether distinct type of vegetation 

 having an organisation peculiarly its own." 



Now the distinguished French Professor in his letter to 

 me states that he had described this fossil plant in a memoir 

 read before the Academy in 1870, and that in his opinion 

 it belonged to Sphenophylluon, and an abstract of the 

 communication appears in the Goraptes Rendus for 1870. 

 I am not in possession of the facts from which the two 

 learned professors came to such different conclusions, but I 

 am inclined to consider the singular little stem as belonging 

 to a new genus until the leaves of Sphenophylhim or Aster o- 

 phyllites are found attached to it. When this comes to pass 

 of course there can be no doubt on the matter. 



Mr. Brockbank, F.G.S., exhibited specimens of iron 

 manufactured by the old Bohemian process from hematite 

 ores in the south of Europe. Similar iron has also recently 



