ex PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



volume. They are, as usual, accompanied by plates in no way in- 

 ferior to those of the preceding volumes. 



Baron P. de Ryckholt has published the second part of his 

 Melanges Paleontologiques, with six plates of fossils. This number 

 is devoted to a description of the fossils found in the neighbourhood 

 of Vise, on the banks of the Meuse below Liege. The formations 

 here observed are given by the author in the following ascending 

 series: — I.Devonian; 2. Carboniferous ; 3. Clay with kidney-shaped 

 masses, of the age of the cretaceous gompholite of Aix-la-Chapelle ; 

 4. Greensand with Belemnitella quadrat a, d'Orb. ; 5. Gravel with 

 clay ; quartzose and siliceous pebbles mixed with ossiferous diluvium. 



I must also mention, however briefly, Prof. King's ingenious 

 communication on the Pleurodictyum problematicum'^ . After care- 

 fully describing the appearance of the specimens he obtained from 

 the Upper Devonian sandstone of the Eifel, which he shows to be 

 casts, he alludes to the curious vermiform appendage which winds 

 tortuously through the substance of the cell-walls, and which, while 

 the Pleurodictyilm was supposed to be a coral, was considered as an 

 extraneous serpuliform body. Prof. King then endeavours to prove 

 that this vermiform appendage is an integral organic portion of the 

 fossil, and for this and other reasons connected with its structure, he 

 maintains that it cannot be regarded as a member of the class 

 Corallaria. The appendage he believes to be the cast of a fleshy 

 tube included in, and protected only by, the substance of the cell- 

 walls, — in fact the cast of a tubular chamber which enclosed the 

 intestinal canal of Pleurodictyum, the animal consequently having 

 had two orifices to its digestive organs. In this point of view it 

 would bear some aflinity to the Bryozoaria. In other respects again 

 it would present aflinities with the Zoanthic type, inasmuch as there 

 would be only one appendage to all the cells. Its occupant may 

 therefore, it is suggested, have been a Zoanthoid Bryozoon ! In con- 

 clusion, the author observes, that if his view of the position of 

 Pleurodictyum in the animal kingdom be correct, it will represent a 

 type which, although not known as living, is one that there is no 

 difliculty in conceiving to have existed, since it forms exactly the link 

 that is wanting to connect the true Corals with the class Bryozoaria. 

 We should thus have another example of what has been described as 

 " the combination in extinct animals of characters which are separately 

 manifest in existing species." But time and space will not permit 

 me to allude to the many interesting memoirs connected with geology 

 and palaeontology which have been published during the past year. 

 I regret that I can only refer you to them generally ; but there is 

 scarcely a scientific periodical published in this country, or on the 

 continent in France, in Germany, or in Italy, which does not contain 

 some valuable information connected with one or other of these 

 branches of our science. 



Miscellaneous. — The subject of cleavage, on which we had several 

 communications read before this Society in the preceding year^ has not 

 again occupied our attention during the past year ; but another geologist 

 * Ann. Nat. Hist. vol. xvii. p. 131. 



