302 Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants. 
0°787 of azote, and 0°03 of carbonic acid. We ourselves 
had occasion to verify this grand law of nature in a journey 
we made to the Alps last year. The atmospheric air, ana+ 
lysed in places tlie most distant from each other, in deep val- 
Jeys and on high mountains, on the banks of the lake of Ge- 
neva and at Neufchatel, in the glacieres of Chamouny, at Col 
de Baume, in the Valais, upon the great St. Bernard, at Turin, 
and at Grenoble, always presented to us the same compo- 
sition. But since we have found that the refractive power 
of the air corresponds to that of the constituent principles 
which compose it, and that ‘it may be deduced from them 
exactly, it also results from this fact, that this refractive 
power is the same over all the world at equal densities; and 
thus the tables of refraction, calculated by the geometricians 
and the astronomers of Europe, may extend, without modi- 
fication, to all the countries in the world, provided that the 
refractive power of the air is not changed by the effects of 
heat : this is what the experiments we purpose making this 
summer will enable us to decide. 
<< In the present memoir we have endeavoured to present 
to natural philosophers and to chemists some useful results 
founded upon scrupulous calculations and precise observa- 
tions. We have endeavoured to determine, by direct expe- 
riments, all the physical facts which serve as the founda- 
tion of the theory of the atmospheric refractions, and’ which 
hitherto had been concluded from observations. In this re- 
spect we have it particularly in view to answer the questions 
proposed by the author of the Mécanique Céleste in his, 
tenth book, and to fix the points to which he had called the 
attention of philosophers.”’ 
XLVII. Memoir upon living and fossil Elephants. By 
M. Cuvier. 
{Concluded from p. 211.] 
fhe British islands, which from their Jocal situation do 
not seem to have ever had any living elephants, present us 
with a great number of fossil ones. 
Sloane © 
