of Natural History, vol. 1) 
124 Scientific Intelligence. 
nger; its circumference measured 1m. 4c. on its greatest diameter, 
liters of air. It is from this enormous volume of air, which is about equal 
to a cube of 8 meters linear edge each way, that the fungus in question 
must have drawn, without losing a single trace, and, if we may so termit, 
with mathem*tical precision, the 142 grams of carbon necessary for its 
development of fourteen days. This is at the rate of, per day of twenty 
four hours, 10°15 grams of carbon, 18°9 liters of carbonic acid gas, aud 
37,800 liters of air. At 86,400 seconds per day, it is upon nearly half 4 
liter of air that the plant must have operated per second to effect the total 
extraction of the carbonic acid gas which was in it. By what means cal 
we estimate the prodigious activity that this inferior plant could develop 
to be able to take in fourteen days all the carbonic acid belonging to 
530,000 liters of air? How astonishing, then, must be the delicacy of 
the absorptive organs which seize on its flight an elastic fluid-—if we may 
Ww u 
the cellules exceeds fourteen billions (14,589,140,400); and since the 
development lasted fourteen days, a million of cellules had to be produced 
every four hours—twelve thousand eellules per second! Just let one 
stroke of the pendulum, and then another, be heard, and conceive, if you 
can, that in that space of time the fungus constructed 12,000 cellules, 
des (as the spores are a hundred times at least more numerous thas 
interior derangement capable of disturbing the mysterious equilibrium 
— reigns through all arts of this living body. How great, thet, 
! aterial 
6. On the Parallelism between. the d tages Individ- 
ual and those in the entire Group af he a, ; | 
by Avrneus Hrarr, (From the Memoirs of the Boston Society 
. » remarkable changes, which 
sessineee) 
eet as 
