is called, gave him such excitement that he faintly recollects being urged like a ball along the floor of the mine with incredible velocity. Soon after this he was again deprived of sensation, in which state he continued for about twenty minutes, till he breathed the pure atmospheric air upon the bank, at the top of the shaft, to which place his brother had carried him, who descended into the mine as soon as he possibly could, upon hearing the explosion, at the risk of his own. life, for the purpose of saving that of his brother, or of any other person whom he could find. H. Hall reports, that after he recovered sensation he felt his whole body racked with pain, the burnt places giving him no uneasiness, comparatively speaking; and that his suffering continued without intermission for two days. Bad as H. Hall's case was, the other five pitmen who were with him had not even such an escape, for four of them were instantly killed, and Ralph Stokell so dangerously bruised and burnt in several places, that his life was for some time despaired of. At a distant part of the mine, where some other pitmen were employed in taking up metal plates, timber, &c. Mr. Hope, the under viewer, Mr. Wild, the overman, and two pitmen, were suffocated by the choak-damp, or carbonic acid gas. Mr. Wild had wandered at least a hundred yards before he met his death by suffocation. Upon an explosion taking place in a coal-mine the choak-damp is very rapidly driven through all parts of the colliery from those places where it had accumulated, and the explosion is always followed by another commotion, of a still more dangerous nature, viz. the “back draught," as the miners term it. The back draught is that impetuous current of air which rushes most violently from all sides within the mine, like "the voice of mighty thunderings," to the spot where the explosion occurred, so as to overcome the vacuum which had been effected by means of the explosion. The following is a list of the persons who were killed :- Ralph Hope, pitman. Robert Clark, pitman. Thomas Miller, pitman. George Richardson, and William Richardson, pitmen. These two young men were brothers; and, having lost their parents, they had the filial goodness to support their grandmother, now in her 103d year, by their industry. By the choak-damp a considerable number of horses were suffocated. In this melancholy list the dreadfully uncertain state of the pitmen is clearly demonstrated. Poor Mr. Hope, the under viewer, was heard to exclaim, in astonishment or despair, a moment before his dissolution, "God have mercy upon us; the pit has fired!" Besides the sufferers, there were fourteen or fifteen men in the pit, who, as if by a miracle, were saved. They had been employed in a distant part of the colliery; and after the explosion wandered on in darkness and stupefaction till by good fortune they chanced to arrive at that part of the mine where there was a sufficient proportion of atmopheric air to support respiration,-Annals of Philosophy. IMPERIAL IMPERIAL INSTITUTE OF FRANCE. Account of the Transactions of the Imperial Institute of France for 1812. (Continued from p. 256.) Zoology, Anatomy, and Animal Physiology.-M. le Chevalier Geof froy-Saint-Hilaire, who has examined at various intervals the numerous family of bats, and has made us acquainted with many inte resting species, proposes to give a general table of them. He has prefaced this undertaking with a dissertation on the rank which these singular animals ought to hold among the mammalia. They were long considered as intermediate between quadrupeds and birds. It is equally obvious that they hold an intermediate place between the quadrumania and carnivorous animals. Among the numerous arrangements proposed by naturalists, there are some, as that of Linnæus in his last editions, and that of Brisson, in which the bats are classed along with the quadrumania; in others, as that of Linnæus in his first editions, and that of Klein, they are placed with the small carnivorous animals, or eaters of insects, as the mole and the hedgehog. Some, as Storr and Cuvier, place them at the head of carnivorous animals, before the insect eaters just mentioned, and immediately after the quadrumania; with this difference, however, that Cuvier distinguishes them more particularly, and makes a subdivision of them. Others, as Ray, Blumenbach, Lacepede, and Iliger, constitute them a separate order; and this order is placed by Ray and by Lacepede in some measure out of the arrangement: by Blumenbach between the quadrumania and the other inguicula, at the head of which this naturalist places the rongeurs. Finally, M. Iliger places them before the carnivorous animals, at the head of which are placed, as in the arrangement of Cuvier, the devourers of insects. It is easy to see that all these combinations will depend upon those organs to which each naturalist has paid the greatest attention. Those who have chiefly attended to the skeleton, to the intestines, to the organization of the feet, to the form of the nails, to the grinders, have considered the bats as analogous to carnivorous animals (and this is the opinion at present most followed); while those who have attended only to the fore-teeth, to the position of the mammæ, to the hanging penis, have considered them as analogous to the quadrumania. M. Geoffroy, in the work of which we have spoken, insists more than usual upon these last relations, to which he thinks sufficient attention has not been paid. He shows particularly that the singular elongation of the anterior extremities, the general tendency of the skin to become excessively wide, and the peculiar properties which are the consequence of this in the bats, both with respect to their sensations and motions, require us to place these mammalia in a separate order; while, at the same time, their striking resemblance to the quadrumania, and to the carnivorous animals, requires that this order should be placed between them. We may look with interest to the subdivision of this order, and to the history of the species, which M. Geoffroy has promised. M. de M. de la Mark, employed at the Museum of Natural History in teaching every thing which concerns the animals destitute of vertebræ, published, some years ago, the work which serves as a basis to his Course. He explains in it, according to his own method, the classes, orders, and genera, of these numerous animals: but as travellers have since discovered many genera and species, as anatomists have more completely explained the structure, and as the meditations of la Mark on the subject have made him discover various new relations among these animals, he has published an abridged table of his course, after his method in its most perfect state, in which he satisfies himself with giving the characters of the greater divisions, and simply enumerating the names of the genera. He follows in their arrangement the degrees of complicateness, beginning with the most simple animals. Supposing that those which have no visible nerves only move in consequence of their irritability, he calls them apathic animals. He gives the names of sensible animals to the other animals without vertebræ, and of intelligent animals to those which have vertebræ. To his old classes, now well known to naturalists, he adds the cirrhipeda, which include the glands-de-mer, and other analogous animals, and which he places between his annelides and his mollusca; that of the epizoaines, or intestinal worms, which he places among his apathic animals; and the infusoria, or microscopic animals without visible mouth or intestines. He leaves the echinodermes in his radiaires, and among the apathic animals, with a greater degree of simplicity than the intestinal worms. We regret that we have not room to notice the other changes introduced by M. de la Mark into his orders, nor the numerous additions which he has made to the list of genera; but naturalists will not fail to look for them in the work itself. Notwithstanding the success of the anatomical investigations of animals without vertebræ for several years back, there still remained a family in which the fundamental organs were not well known. It is the family called echinodermes, which comprehends the star-fish," and other analogous genera. The Class having proposed a prize for the perfecting of this branch of comparative anatomy, it was gained by M. Tiedeman, Professor in the University of Landshut. The memoir of this skilful anatomist makes us accurately acquainted, for the first time, with many particulars respecting the organization of these singular animals. A species of circulation is easily observed between their organs of digestion and those of respiration, without, however, offering a complete double circle. Nor can the branches be followed in the exterior organs, nor in those of motion. It appears even, according to M. Tiedeman, that a quite different vascular system is distributed to those numerous peduncles which in these animals serve for instruments of locomotion. The organs of respiration differ much in different genera. In the holothuria they represent hollow trees, whose branches fill and empty themselves with water from without, and are interlaced with a vascular net. In the stars and urchins the water penetrates imme diately into the cavity of the body, and moistens all the parts of it. This This beautiful work, accompanied by plates exquisitely finished by M. Münz, Doctor of Medicine, appeared to the Class to deserve the prize, by the number of new facts well authenticated which it presents, and by the great progress which it has made to the intimate knowledge of the echinodermes, though it has not completely answered the question proposed relative to their circulation. A family much more simple in its organization than the echinodermes, but much more numerous in species, namely, the corals, and other animals composed of a solid basis, has been particularly studied by M. Lamouroux, both with respect to the species and the methodical arrangement. This naturalist has made a great collection of those whose basis is not stony, and which present forms so agreeable, and often so singular; and comparing with much care the form, the mutual position, of the cells from which the polypi issue, and all the other visible differences of these animals, he proposes to add twentyeight new genera. This is an important work for completing the system of animals; but it does not, from its nature, admit of an abridged analysis. We are anxious for its speedy publication. M. Cuvier, proposing soon to begin printing the great book on comparative anatomy with which he has been occupied for so many years, has presented to the Class a table of the divisions according to which the animal kingdom will be distributed in that work. Naturalists have been, long struck with the great differences which separate animals without vertebræ from each other, while animals with vertebræ resemble each other in so many respects. Hence a great difficulty in generalizing that branch of comparative anatomy, while it is easy to generalize what relates to the animals with vertebræ. But this difficulty has suggested its own remedy. From the manner in which the propositions relative to each organ are always grouped, M. Cuvier concludes that there exist among animals four principal forms. The first is that which is known under the name of animals with vertebræ; and the three others are nearly similar to it in the uniformity of their respective plans. The author calls them mollusca, articulated animals, and radiated animals, or zoophites. He subdivides each of these forms or branches into four classes, from motives nearly similar to those which have produced the four classes generally adopted among the animals with vertebræ. He has drawn from this disposition, in some respects symmetrical, a great facility in reducing under general rules the differences of organi zation, The comparison which the same author has made of the osteology of the animals with vertebræ, has given him ideas respecting the bony structure of the heads in this class, which he has likewise presented to the Class. It had been for some time observed that the oviparous animals with vertebræ, that is to say, birds, reptiles, and fishes, had certain common relations in their structure which distinguished them from the mammalia. M. Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire had even presented some years ago an elaborate essay on the subject, of which an account was formerly given, in which, among other things, he had shown the identity identity of the structure of the heads of oviparous animals, and the resemblance in the numerous pieces which enter into their com position, with that of those which we distinguish in the fœtus of mammalia, where, as is known, the bones are much more subdivided than in adults. M. Cuvier, adopting the views of M. Geoffroy, has tried to determine in an accurate manner to what bone of the head of mammalia corresponds each group of bones in the head of the different oviparous animals; and he conceives he has succeeded, by joining to the analogy of the foetus of the first the consideration of the position and of the functions of the bones; that is to say, by examining what organs they protect, to what nerves and vessels they give passage, and to what muscles they furnish attachments. M. Jacobsen, Surgeon-Major in the armies of the King of Den mark, has made known to the Class an organ which he discovered in the nostrils of quadrupeds, with which no anatomist seems to have been acquainted. It consists in a narrow sack placed along the canal of the nose, defended by a cartilaginous production, covered internally by a mucous membrane, doubled in part by a glandular tissue, receiving remarkable nerves, with distinct divisions of the first pair, and which open most commonly into the palate, behind the fore-teeth, by a canal which passes through the hole called incisive by anatomists. This organ does not exist in man, and is more distinct in most herbivorous animals than in the carnivorous. must suppose that it is connected with some of those faculties which nature has given to quadrupeds, but denied to our species, as that of rejecting poisonous substances, of distinguishing the sex, the state of heat, &c. We The particular history of animals is enriched with important works and interesting observations. M. de Humboldt, Foreign Associate, has published the first volume of his Observations on the Animals of America, in which he has inserted not only his different researches on the condor, the electric eel, the crocodile, and many other objects of which we have spoken in our preceding analyses; but he has likewise given several new memoirs, namely, on the apes of the New World, of which Buffon and Gmelin only made known 11 or 12 species, but which Humboldt, uniting his observations with those of Azzara and Geoffroy-SaintHilaire, makes 46. He has recently read to the Class another memoir intended for his second volume, in which he describes new species of serpents that he found in Guyana. The tempests which agitated the sea last winter threw ashore several large cetaceous fish upon our coasts. The Class appointed, as a commission to examine the facts which were received respecting these animals, MM. le Comte Lacepede, Geoffroy-Saint-Hilaire, and Cuvier. These naturalists have observed that several of these animals were formerly unknown, and that this subject, which might be interesting to our fisheries and our commerce, deserved to draw the attention of government. They gave a description of a species thrown ashore in great |