When the reproductive phenomena of Alcyonella, as manifested both in gemmation and true generation, are viewed in their proper sequence, they will be found to present a series of acts which admit of an obvious comparison with the class of phenomena commonly known as the “alternation of generations.”

From the fecundated ovum an embryo is produced in the ordinary way after the segmentation of the vitellus. In this embryo, which presents at first the form of a locomotive ciliated sac, sexual organs are never directly developed, but there are produced within it by a process of gemmation the following series of zooids.

The specimen of this pottery was found last spring (1856) on the property of William Stirling, Esq. of Keir, along with the remains of a human skeleton, and so broken into fragments as to be of no archæological value

The clay, or rather loam, from which this pottery had been made had evidently undergone little or no previous preparation; the fragments were brittle, and had not been highly fired;—in this respect being inferior to the pottery of the Ojibbeway Indians about to be described.

This part of the paper contains an inquiry into the action of a vibrating body upon a linear elastic series, as representative of the action of a sound-emitting substance upon the air.

It results that when one end of a linear elastic series is attached to an oscillating substance, all the internal oscillations of which the system is capable when one end of it is fixed, are called into existence; the number of these being equal to the number of the elements in the system, and their periodic times being mutually incommensurable; and that to these is added another, isochronous and synchronous with that of the oscillating substance.