156 French National Institute. 
state of putrefaction. The latter more particularly occupied 
his attention. His experiments have been made on fresh- 
water fish, sea-fish, and various kinds of wood. The results 
of these experiments have proved, that the phosphorescence 
of each is a species of combustion, in which water and car-. 
bonic acid are produced. All the constituent parts of the 
animal muscle, and of wood, do not contribute to the light 
which is produced, The woody part, and muscular fibre, 
do not undergo in these changes any essential alteration. 
The phosphorescence of the wood 1s chiefly owing to a 
glutinous principle that serves to unite the woody fibres ; 
and that of the flesh, to a gelatinous principle which unites 
the muscular fibres. 
Messrs. Cuvier and Brongniart have discovered, in the 
environs of Paris, very extensive beds of stone, that con- 
tain only fresh-water shells, which appear to have been de- 
posited in ponds or lakes. Some of these beds of stone ave 
separated by intermediate banks of marine formation. This 
seems to prove that the sea has made.an irruption on ‘the 
continent which it had formerly abandoned, and confirms 
the traditions of a deluge so universally spread amongst dif- 
ferent nations.—Upon beds of gypsum in the same “neigh- 
bourhood, which contain the bones of reptiles, and of fish, 
with fresh-water shells, and petrified trunks of palm trees, 
repose other beds of stone, containing innumerable quantities 
of marine shells only; and again upon these, other beds of 
fresh-water shells, but of a kind entirely different from the 
former.—lIt is impossible to have more clear and manifest 
indications of the revolutions which have taken place on the 
surface of the globe. 
M. Sage and M. Cubieres have aac the attention of 
philosophers to a singular fact, which has excited innume- 
table conjectures. In the neighbourhood of Puzzoli, three 
erect columns of a small temple have been discovered, thirty 
French feet below the present level of the sea, all pierced 
and bored to the same height, by dails and polades, a 
kind of marine shell-fish, which penetrate into the frei 
stones immerged under the surface. of the, seay— Have 
these columns been taken from a quarry formerly. under 
the surlace of the seas— But why should they have 
cl.osen stones so perforated ? and how does it happen that 
the perforations extend exactly to the same height 
in each column?—Has the temple been successively 
sunk and raised again in a volcanic country subject to so 
many irregular movements ?—But. how, after such violent 
shocks, could the columns remain crect ?—Have volcanie 
erpsions opened deep rayines which have closed at one ex 
tremity, 
‘ 
* 
