PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY OF GENEVA. 269 
seldom found. A large number of inside moulds, especially of Mollusks, offer 
a singular peculiarity. Certain portions of their surface are covered with ser- 
pulz and encrusting bryozoa, which have evidently lived on these moulds. 
The middle neocomian of Saleve may be divided into six strata, which present, 
paleontologically, certain differences, but which contain an assemblage of fos- 
sils pertaining to two distinct faunas, both carefully described and characterized 
by M. Loriol. 
In answer to some objections of M. Favre to the epithet alpine as applied to 
the neocomian facies of the Voirons, M. Pictet pointed out that there are in the 
neocomian two very distinct faunas; one of which occurs in the Jura and 
throughout France; the other, whose fossils are wholly different, commences 
at Sentis, traverses the small cantons, the Bernese Oberland, the canton of Fri- 
bourg, and extends to Chatel St. Denis and Bex. It is again found at the Voi- 
rons, at Mole, whence it stretches along the Isere, traverses the higher and 
lower Alps, and following the prolongation of these mountains reaches Padua 
and Venice. This fauna is characterized by great numbers of unrolled cephal- 
opods. ‘There are points of contact where these two faunas meet, as if by digi- 
tations. Saléve forms a jurassic digitation, the south an alpine digitation. 
Botany has not, this year, played any considerable part at our meetings. M. 
Claparede recounted the new experiments of M. Pasteur on fermentation. This 
savant has observed that the infusory animalcules which are developed in fer- 
menting liquids continue to live when deprived of oxygen. But in the opinion 
of all microscopists, these pretended animalcules are in reality vegetables, 
which should be classed with the semi-cellular algze. 
Professor Wartmann communicated the result of experiments which, at the 
request of M. Thury, he had made on the influence which excessive cold exer- 
cises upon seeds. Seeds, some of which had been exposed for a half hour to a 
temperature of 57° centigrade, and others for twenty minutes to one of 110°, 
vegetated, when sown in spring, as well as the seeds of the same species which 
had been protected from cold. It results that the greatest cold we can pro- 
duce does not destroy or even enfeeble the vitality of seeds. 
" M. Casimir de Candolle, who was not then a colleague, read a memoir on the 
artificial production of cork, which he has had an opportunity of observing 
during a sojourn in Africa. This paper having been printed in the sixteenth 
volume of the Memoirs of the Society, which will contain the report I have now 
the honor to present to you, no analysis of it is necessary. Your president has 
also had the privilege of making some communications to you. I submitted to 
you my researches respecting the family of the Hypoxylee, ( Pyrenomycetes, 
Fr.,) and endeavored to show that to this entire group of fungi should be 
applied the same principles of classification which I have adopted for the 
tribe of the Hysterinex. This memoir being but the development of § 4 of the 
paper which you have caused to be printed in the sixteenth volume of our col- 
lection, I refer to that paragraph all who may be interested in the subject. I 
took. occasion to bring to your notice the observations of .M. de Bary on the 
Cystopus candidus, a minute Uredinea, which forms white spots on the leaves 
of the Scorzoneras, in the spores of which the Professor of Fribourg tells us he 
has seen, when they are sown in water, the formation of zoospores furnished 
with two flagellary cilia. M.de Bary also tells us that, in certain conditions, 
he has seen zoospores formed in the tubes issuing from the spores of the cham- 
pignon of the potato, ( Peronospora devastatrix.) I communicated to you, in 
the last place, the researches of M. Hicks on the gonidia of Lichens, from 
which it would seem to result that a multitude of pretended aerial Algz, 
described under the names of Protococcus, Palmoglea, §c., are but stages of 
development of these gonidia. 
Some very interesting communications on zoology have been received by the 
Society in the course of the year. By M. Claparede our attention was called 
