SI 4? Scientific IntelUg’ence'. 
cuticle or scarf skin, and cutis vera or true skin ; and, between 
these, many anatomists place a third layer, named rete mucosum. 
This rete mucosum, is supposed by some to be the seat of the 
colour of the skin, and that, therefore, it is reddish in the Euro- 
pean and black in the Negro, and so forth. The late Dr Gor- 
don denied its existence in the European race of the human 
species, but bdieved he had found it in the Negro. This opi- 
nion is adopted by Lawrence, in his late interesting work on the 
Natural History of Man. Rudolphi has lately re-examined the 
human skin, and declares that there is no such part as the rete 
mucosum, and that the colour of the different races of the human 
species is seated in the cuticle. 
40. Respiration of Frog^. — It appears, from a series of curious 
experiments performed by M. Edwards, and detailed in the 
Annales de Chimie et Physique for January 1819, that frogs, 
toads, and lizards, are preserved alive and in health under water 
for weeks, by means of the air contained in the water, which they 
abstract, not by the lungs but by the skin. 
41. Live Lizard imbedded in a Seam of Coal. — In the month 
of August 1818, when the workmen were sinking a new pit at Mr 
Fenton’s colliery near Wakefield, and had passed through mea- 
sures of stone, grey buist, blue stone, and some thin beds of coal, 
to the depth of 150 yards, they came to the seam of coal, about 
four feet thick, which they proposed to work. After excava- 
ting about three inches of it, one of the miners struck his pick 
into a crevice, and, having shattered the coal around into small 
pieces, he discovered a lizard about five inches long. It con- 
tinued very brisk and lively for about ten minutes, and then 
drooped and died. See Philosophical Magazine, vol. lii. p. S77- 
BOTANY. 
42. Amici's Discoveries respecting the Motion of Sap in Vege- 
tables. — M. Amici, professor of mathematics in the University 
of Modena, has constructed a reflecting microscope, in which 
the image is formed in one of the conjugate foci of an ellipsoidal 
speculum. As this instrument gives very distinct vision, it ad- 
mits of the application of very high magnifying pov/ers, and 
has enabled M. Amici to make several important discoveries. 
One of the most curious of these, relates to the form of the 
orbit in which, the sap circulates in vegetables; He took a small 
