Miscellaneous. 451 
electric current was then suddenly reversed: the circulation exhi- 
bited no alteration. The stem was then exposed to the influence of 
each of the poles separately, from the base of the stem to the apex ; 
still no change in the circulation was visible. After each experiment 
all magnetic influence was suppressed, but no change in the rate of 
the motion became evident. 
It was thus shown that the magnetic force, even when prodigious, 
exerts no influence on the circulation of Chara. Therefore there is 
no relation between the magnetic force and the vital force producing 
this circulation. 
These experiments, with those of 1837, prove that the circulation 
is caused by a vital force, which is not electrical, since electricity 
merely acts like any other exciting cause, and which has no relation 
to the magnetic force, since the latter has not the slightest influence 
upon it. 
"It must be admitted therefore that the vital force is a force sui 
generis, of the nature, relations and mechanism of which we are to- 
tally ignorant. 
These observations must necessarily change the opinion of those 
who consider the vital force as something imaginary. 
At the same time it must be understood, that all the causes called 
exciting are debilitating or sedative in their primitive or direct effect, 
and only strengthening, stimulant or tonic in their secondary or indi- 
rect effect, by reason of the vital reaction which they occasion either 
instantaneously or after a short interval.—Comptes Rendus, April 
15th, 1846.—A. H. 
New species of Fossil Frogs. 
M. Dunker has found some small bones of frogs in shell and co- 
ralline deposits of Hellern, not far from Osnabriick, which belong to 
the tertiary epoch. H. de Meyer, who has examined them, has 
found in them at least three new species, which may be distinguished 
particularly by the forms of the humerus, This same bone had al- 
ready served that able palzontologist to establish twenty-four spe- 
cies of frogs found at Weisenau, Not one of the humeri discovered 
at Hellern is similar to those of these twenty-four species. The 
other bones, such as those of the sacrum, of the fore-arm and of the 
pelvis, appear to indicate more analogy between the species of these 
two localities, Leonhard und Bronn’s Neues Jahrbuch, 1845, p. 798. 
Description of Fossil Foot-Prints. By Aurrep T. Kine, M.D. 
It is now more than a year since fossil foot-prints were discovered 
in the sandstone of the coal-measures in Westmoreland county, Penn- 
sylvania. Since then, numerous localities have been observed, which 
contain well-characterized impressions. Some of these are similar 
to, and a few identical with, those which I first described, but by far 
the greatest number are totally different from any which have here- 
tofore been observed. 
About three miles from this town, near the summit of the first 
anticlinal roll, west of Chesnut ridge, one of the principal axes of 
