122 Scientific Intelligence. 
‘ The very old ones begin to decay near the ground, where a crumbling 
away commences all around, and having but a narrow attachment, they 
resemble immense balls or spheres laid upon the earth. Upon close ex- 
amination, each mass is found to be herbaceous throughout, the outer 
coat formed of innumerable little shoots rising to the same height, covered 
with imbricating leaves, and so nsely packed that it is even difficult to 
cut out a portion with a ‘knife, while the surface is of such uniformity that 
ee sometimes spread over it, and other plants vegetate on its surface, 
n the occasional holes or dec ecayed places. If at a very early period, a 
pond plant en the ~yiat be removed and examined, vr origin of these 
great balls ma ; for each of them, of whatever size, is the 
uct of a «earn eos and the result of ma ny ese nt of hundreds 
of years’ growth. In a young state, the plant vena of a very long slender 
perpendicular root, like a whip lash, that penetrates the soil. At its sum- 
mit are borne two or three small branching stems, each densely covered 
A 
for its whole length with sheathing leaves. As the individual increases 
in size, the branches divide more and more, ridinaing regularly from the 
rooting centre, instead of prolonging rapidly ; th nd out lateral short 
which are nourished by fibrous radicles, proceeding from below t 
leaves, and deriving nutriment from the quantity of vegetable matter 
which the decayed foliage of the lower part of the stems and older 
branches affords.” —p. 286. 
2. On the Vertebrate Structure a the Skull ; Aye Prof. OwEN, (By 
Assoc., from the Athen., Sept. 26, 1846.)—Prof. Owen commen ie ms 
referring to his previous aefinition ie a typical vertebra, or pri 
segmen nt of the endo-skeleton (Ath. No. 986, p. 969). He considered 
that the bones of the skull consisted of a series of four such seg- 
ments ;—but before entering into the details on which his Gaact octal 
were founded, he reviewed the previous eg a of the cranial 
bones from the early anthropotomical one into those of the cranium 
proper and those of the face, to the latest Glnas ication by M. Agassiz, 
based upon the embryological researches of Dr. Vogt. With rega 
to the division into bones of the cranium and those of the face, he ob- 
served that this having been poriennally founded upon the exclusive study 
of the most extremely modified skull in the whole vertebrate series,— 
and essentially an assemblage of bones, which are always distinct in 
fishes and reptiles, and all of which appertain to distinct natural sys- 
tems of groups of bones, though so strangely blended for a special 
object into one osseous mass in the human subject. The petrous pro- 
cess (petrosal) is the spinal capsule of the acoustic organ; the mastoid 
i 
