448 Scientific Intelligence. — Zoology. 



to which civilization has not transported multitudes of human 

 beings, who are necessarily destructive to the harmony of 

 creation, for example, in the Indian Archipelago, in the Red 

 Sea, where the dugong is found, or in the Gulf of Kamtschatka, 

 to which the Lamantin de Stelles is exclusivelyconfined. Thus, 

 in the vast embouchure of the Rhone, in the Gulf of Lyons, 

 there existed a species re-established by M. de Christol, per- 

 haps the same as that which lived in the ocean of Homer, 

 or in the Gulf of the Nile. For it appears that the bones 

 found by M. Lefevre, on the other side of Cairo, in a calca- 

 reous ridge, probably belong to a species of lamantin rather 

 than of phoca. In the Gulf of the P6, one was likewise found, 

 the bones having been discovered in the sub-Apennine hills 

 in the neighbourhood of Montiglio in Montferrat, and of 

 which M. Bruno has formed a genus under the name of Chei- 

 rotherlum. The Gulf of Gascony, at the wide embouchure of 

 the Garonne, also possessed a species, perhaps the same as 

 that in the vicinity of Angers or the Gulf of Ouest, as there 

 exists a living species in the present day at the mouth of the 

 great rivers of Northern Africa, and another almost opposite 

 in the Gulf of the Amazon in South America. The Gulf of 

 the Rhine produced the Dinotherium, which was likewise 

 found in the other European gulfs ; and, perhaps at that period, 

 another species occurred in the Gulf of St Lawrence, for we 

 cannot suppose that it exists there still, and has hitherto 

 escaped observation, unless the mastodon which evidently 

 forms the passage of the terrestrial gravigrades or elephants 

 to the aquatic gravigrades or lamantins, be the representa- 

 tive of this family in North America." 



M. de Blainville proposed that the Academy should express 

 its approbation of M. de ChristoFs researches, in order to encou- 

 rage him to farther exertions in this investigation, which was 

 agreed to. 



5. The Migrations and Manners of Lemmings, Mus Lemnus. 

 L. Lemnus norvegicus, Hag. By M. Martins.* — OlaiisMagnus, 

 archbishop of Upsal, is the most ancient author who speaks of 

 Lemmings. According to him, Wormius has devoted a mono- 

 graph to them, in which he makes an effort to prove that they 

 fall from the clouds. We are indebted for many interesting 



* llcivl to the Soek'tc Philomaticiuc of Paris, and printed in the " Institut." 



