444 Silurian and Devonian Fossils of Canada. 



Description. — Sub-triangular ; both valves moderately convex 

 and smooth, apical angle about ninety degrees or a little less ; 

 sides from the beak to about one ha'f the length straight, then 

 rounded ; front more or less broadly rounded ; beak of larger 

 valve extended, incurved at the point and with a moderately 

 large concave area beneath ; beak of smaller valve strongly 

 incurved apparently entering the visceral cavity beneath the area 

 of the larger valve ; length and width about equal. 



Locality and Formation. — Fourth Chute of the Bonne-chere 

 and Pauquette's Rapids, associated with numerous fossils of the 

 Black River and Trenton Formations. 



Collectors — Sir W. E. Logan, J. Richardson, E. Billings. 



ARTICLE XXXV. — Some Observations on Donates Comet of 

 1858. By Charles Smallwood, M.D., LL.D., Professor 

 of Meteorology in the University of McGill College, Mon- 

 treal. (Presented to the Natural History Society.) 

 The measured limits that were set to the orbit of our earth 

 by the Creator's fiat, and which tend to develop with remark- 

 able regularity the buddirg flowers of spring, to ripen the 

 golden fruits of autumn, and bring the returning seasons of" sum- 

 mer and winter," are instances of those permanent and perpe'.ual 

 laws which mark the wisdom, the power, and the beneficence of 

 the Almighty Architect. To contemplate the starry host night 

 after night, seems to have been the primitive and favourite occu- 

 pation of the Chaldean shepherds while in the pursuit of their 

 pastoral duties ; and to admire and to study its grandeur is still 

 the sublime occupation of many, who, when the dim veil of night 

 invites the busy thoughtless world to slumber and spreads dark- 

 ness over the resorts of pleasure, delight to search in the all but 

 fathomless depths of space for some bright speck or point of light, 

 removed from the observer to such a distance that the human 

 mind cannot embrace even the thought of its immensity, and 

 whose light has taken even thousands of years to reach us. 

 This distant spot of light is to us fixed in its position ever since 

 the human eye aided by the telescope has gazed upon if, and the 

 micrometer has marked its position with the greatest accuracy. 

 Hundreds too of those minute and distant objects have been 

 yearly " catalogued." The earth has undergone its changes, but 

 the glorious canopy of the heavens has thus remained unchanged. 



