Annales des Sciences Naturelles. 413 



ganismes inferieurs." He begins with a defence of the accuracy of his former, 

 and a detail of some new observations, which confirm the opinion he entertains, 

 that there is no such complex digestive apparatus in those infusory animalcules, 

 as Ehrenberg has described, — the presumed stomachs and intestines being 

 merely irregular, empty spaces (vacuoles) produced by the penetration of the 

 nutritive matters, or by partial dissolutions (diffluence) of the homogeneous 

 body. He then proceeds to describe some new forms of Infusoria which, like 

 the Rhizopodes, shoot out from a fixed portion of the body a certain number 

 of long contractile filaments of extreme tenuity, that are subservient to loco- 

 motion. He next discusses the nature of the tail-like filament with which 

 many infusory animalcules are furnished, and which, he says, is an organ of lo- 

 comotion, and not a proboscis, as Ehrenberg was induced to conclude from 

 some observations he had made on the Peridiniees and Cryptomonadines. Du- 

 jardin admits, that, as it is homogeneous like the body, and deprived of an epi- 

 thelium, it may be capable of absorbing from its surface nutritive matters, but 

 that it has not the character or use of a proboscis, he is certain. The conti- 

 nuation of Hitchcock's " Description d'empreintes de pisds d' Oiseaux dans le 



Gres rouge du Massachusets." Analyse des travaux anatomiques, physiologi- 



ques et zoologiques presentes a I'Academie des Sciences pendant les mois de Mars 



et d'Avril 1836 One or two of the notices in this section will be found among 



our zoological intelligence ; — we can only specify here Jacquemin's letters on 

 the respiration of birds ; and on the order of the disposition of the feathers on 

 the body of a bird; Duvernoy on the tongue of the Cameleon ; Geoffroy 

 Saint-Hilaire on the " embryo of Syra," viz. a -foetus which was vomited by 

 a child of the town of Syra, in 1834, and which has been discussed with an in- 

 terest which the singularity of the occurrence may well excuse : as a fact, it 

 cannot be registered in science, since many doubts hang over the real nature of 

 the substance vomited Memoire sur lafamille des Beroides, par R. P. Les- 

 son. In his preliminary paragraphs, the author collects together what has been 

 ascertained relative to the structure and physiology of this interesting family, 

 and then proceeds to divide it into tribes and genera, characterized with neat- 

 ness and precision. Under each genus, the species are indicated, and shortly 

 described in the usual manner of systematists. The attempt here made to il- 

 lustrate the Beroidece is unquestionably an able one, but our knowledge of the 

 species is evidently too limited as yet, to allow us to regard any classification, 

 as other than a convenient table for future study. The author has overlooked 

 Professor Grant's Essay on the Nervous System of Beroe pileus, and on the 

 structure of its cilia, in the Trans, of the Zool. Soc. Vol. i. p. 9. 



II. Botany. 



Memoire sur les Myrsinees, les Sapotees et les embryons paralleles au plan de 



Vombilic, par Auguste de Saint-Hilaire Memoire sur la distribution et de 



mouvement des jluides dans les plantes, par M. Ch. Girou de Buzareingues. 



A very important contribution to vegetable physiology Observations sur les 



Saxifraga stellaris et Clusii, par P. Duchartre, who seems to have proved that 



the two species are merely variations of the same plant Notice sur quclqucs 



Cryptogames nouveUes des environs de Bahia (Brcsil), par J. E. Duby. 



