1814.] Scientific Intelligence. 77 



two of them appear to cross the axis of the chop, forming with each 

 other angles of about 80 and 100. These observations show that 

 the substance is crystallized. 



VII. Remarkable Petrifaction. 



Soemering has published lately, at Munich, a paper upon a fossil 

 skeleton eight inches in length found imbedded in calcareous rock 

 near Aicbstadt. The paper is accompanied by three figures, two of 

 the fossil as it now exists, and in the third the dislocated bones are 

 arranged so as to form a complete skeleton. 



He had the specimen itself in his possession, and determines it 

 to be the osseous remains of an animal of the bat tribe, approaching 

 to the pteropus pimllus of Lechenault. He gives it the name of 

 ernithocephalus. 



Cuvier had never seen the specimen itself, but made his observa- 

 tions on a figure of it published in IJ84 by the late Collini, keeper 

 of the Electoral Museum at Manheim. He decides that it belongs 

 to a new genus in the family of lizards. 



Soemering occupies a considerable part of his paper in refuting 

 the conclusions contained in Cuvicr's dissertation on this osteolite. 

 He finds the number of cervical vertebra? to be seven, a number 

 which is constant in the mammalia. In Collini's figure the number 

 is not correctly represented. The number of the phalanges digi- 

 rorum appears greater than it really is, because the epiphyses are 

 separate from the middle part of the bone, as they are in the 

 humerus, femur, &c. By this apparent number of the phalanges the 

 skeletons of the paws in Collini's figure is likened to that of the 

 paws of lizards ; there is a large cavity anterior to the orbit which 

 in mammalia is filled with the corniculated bones of the nose; the 

 defect of these in the fossil may arise from their cartilaginous state, 

 owing to the immaturity of the individual, which is seen to have 

 been young by the uuconncction of the epiphyses just mentioned. 

 A separate boric, to which the under jaw is articulated, is represented 

 in Collini's figure, and is characteristic of lizards. Upon a careful 

 examination of the fossil, Soemering could perceive no such bone; 

 the under jaw appeared to have been articulated as in mammalia; the 

 intimate substance of the bones he found to resemble that of the 

 bones of mammalia, and not that of the bones of lizards. He gives 

 various other characters, and a detail of the comparison he instituted 

 between the fossil and a number of skeletons of known animals, our 

 cotemporarics in the present creation. These induce him to adopt 

 the conclusion above mentioned, and to reject Cuvier's. 



The museum at Munich contains some oilier ancient animals 

 found in ilic calcareous strata near Aichstadt. Amongst these are a 

 Crab and an ichthvolitc ; the former nearly related to the molucca 

 crab (monoculus polypkemus) ; the latter to stromaleus, a genus of 

 fish, all the known species of which are inhabitants of the equato- 

 rial seas. C. 

 Uay f», I 814. 



