276 French National Institute. 



The voyage of M. Perftn, among the Infinite number of 

 interesting objects it has procured, has furnished us with 

 two proper for throwing light on the history of these fossils. 

 The shell called by naturalists nautilus spirula was among 

 those still found alive the nearest to the cornua ammonis, 

 the spiral camerines, and nummularis. M. Peron brought 

 home the animal, and we have seen that it is not contained 

 in the shell, but, on the contrary, that it contains the shell, 

 as the cuttle-fish contains its bone. This animal belongs, 

 therefore, to the genus of the cuttle-fish. It gives us reason 

 to believe that the cornua ammGnis and nummularia belong 

 to it also, and he explains every thing that remained em- 

 barrassing on this subject. The same traveler has brought 

 back also an animal near a-kin to the medusae, which con- 

 tains in its inside a cartilaginous disk entirely analogous in 

 its structure to the concentric nummularia. M. Sage ob- 

 served in a piece of coal the impression of a disk, which 

 must have resembled that of this medusa still more than 

 these nummularia themselves. 



M. Cuvier, who has made known to the class these two 

 results of M. Peron's collections, presented to it also two 

 facts interesting to geolog\', discovered by himself. 



The first is, that among the numerous- animals of un- 

 known genera with the remains of which the plaster quar- 

 ries m the neighbourhood of Paris are filled, there is found 

 a kind of opossum, a genus still existing, but only in the 

 new continent : the other is, that the remains of a hyaena, 

 very similar to that of the Cape of Good Hope, are scattered 

 throughout the earth in different parts of France and Ger- 

 many. 



M.Desmarets has contributed also to extend this curious 

 part of the natural history of animals known only by their 

 remains. He has presented to us two sort« of fos^i! shells 

 of Angoumois hitherto unknown to naturalis-ts : he has read 

 to us also a treatise on the difFeient sorts of vegetable earth, 

 their characters, and their origin. We have had like- 

 wise in mineralogy a Description of Guadaloupe by 

 M. I'Escalicr. This island is in part volcanic and in part 

 madreporic. 



M. Humboldt has given us a.vi':nv of the geologic com- 

 position of the heights of the Cordilleras. M. Ramond has 

 added new observations to those which he befor3 made on 

 the Pyrenees. 



M. Lelievre has taught us that the kind of mineial called 

 pinite has been discovered in France by Cordier, wlu) found 

 it in minerals collected in the environs of Clermont in Au- 

 . ^ vej-gne. 



