192 Miscellanies. 
Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences of Berlin, for February, 1839. 
He found it to contain fourteen kinds of siliceous infusory animals, 
viz. : j% 
Cocconema asperum, 7. sp. © 
Eunotia Arcus. 
“ Diodon. 
Navicula alata. 
<3 amphioxys, 7. sp. 
“ . Suecica. 
“e viridis. 
ae viridula. 
Fragillaria trionodis. 
Gallionella distans. 
Gomphonema paradoxum. 
Spongilla lacustris? (Spongia ?) 
Spongia apiculata. (Tethya?) n. Sp. 
Amphidiscus Rotula. (nov. genus?) 
The most predominating forms are Gallionella distans, Navicula 
_ viridis, and numerous fragments of the needle-shaped Spongie- 
Besides these animal remains, a very considerable quantity of the 
fossil pollen of the Pine was also observed, wholly similar to that 
which is found in Europe under the same circumstances. Six of these 
fossil American species, it is further mentioned, are known as living 
species in Europe. Four others are known in Europe as fossils, of 
which three have been observed only in the ** Mountain-meal” 
(Bergmehl) of Sweden and Finland. Needle-shaped Spongie have 
also been found in a fossil state in Sicily. The Amphidiscus, which 
is indicated as a new genus, Prof. Ehrenberg thinks may possibly be 
only the inner portion of some peculiar Spongia or Tethya. In shape 
it is a cylinder with a disk at each end, as the name denotes, and is 
compared to a thread-spool, (Zwirn-Rollchen.) Vide Bericht Ver- 
handl. k. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin for Feb- 
ruary, 1839, p. 31. The Amphidiscus has not been detected in Eu- 
rope; but since the date of the above notice, we learn from Prof. 
Ehrenberg, that he has discovered the same species among other fos- 
sil infusoria from the banks of the Amazon. We would inform the 
curious in such matters, that deposits of the kind are very common 
in the United States, in situations similar to that in which they were 
first noticed ; and those who have suitable microscopes, may readily 
a m for examination, and will probably discover many new 
* 
» The deposits of nearly pure siliceous infusorial remains in 
oo erts of Germany, are twenty or thirty feet in thickness, and 
