1. The lunar diurnal variation of magnetic declination as first discovered by Kreil, depended on too few observations to be free from the errors introduced by irregular disturbing causes. The independent discovery of the lunar action on the magnetic needle made afterwards by myself, was liable to the same criticism; but the agreement of the results obtained, both for the magnetic declination and the horizontal force, was sufficiently great to give a considerable value to the conclusion, that the magnetic needle obeys a diurnal law, depending on the moon's hour angle, both as to its direction and the force with which it is directed. This conclusion was farther confirmed in the discussion first made by myself, for the lunar diurnal variation of the vertical magnetic force, which gave, within an hour, the same epochs of maxima and minima as those obtained previously by me for the horizontal component.

The illustrious Cuvier, in his treatise “ Sur les Ossemens fossiles,” described and figured an imperfect skull which had been obtained, in 1804, by M. Raymond Gorsse in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, near Fos, on the southern coast of France. It had been found on the sea-shore in the preceding year by a peasant. Cuvier recognised it to belong to an undescribed genus of cetaceans, to which he gave the name of Ziphius; and from the deep hollow which it possessed at the base of the rostrum, he named it Ziphius cavirostris. From the condition of the bones, and the general characters of the specimen, he judged it to be a fossil. Cuvier's description, though brief, and from a mutilated specimen, yet clearly states the most salient features of the skull.

There are several problems of great practical importance in electro-magnetic measurements, in which the value of a quantity has to be calculated by taking the sum of the logarithms of the distances of a system of parallel wires from a given point. The calculation is in some respects analogous to that in which we find the potential at a point due to a given system of equal particles, by adding the reciprocals of the distances of the particles from the given point. There is this difference, however, that whereas the reciprocal of a line is completely defined when we know the unit of length, the logarithm of a line has no meaning till we know not only the unit of length, but the modulus of the system logarithms.

On the subject of accent and quantity as elements of human speech, there has been such an immense amount of confusion, arising from vague phraseology, that in renewing the discussion nothing seems more necessary than to start with a careful and accurate definition of terms; and that a definition not taken from books, and the dumb bearers of a dead tradition, but from the living facts of nature, and the permanent qualities belonging to articulated breath. Now, if we observe accurately the natural and necessary affections of words in human discourse, considered merely as a succession of compact little wholes of articulated breath, without regard to their signification, we shall find that all the affections of which they are capable amount to four. Either (1), the mass of articulated breath which we call a word, is sent forth in a comparatively small volume, as in the case of a common gun, or it is sent forth in large volume, as in the case of a Lancaster gun; this is a mere affair of bulk, in virtue of which alone it is manifest that any word rolled forth from the lungs of a Stentor must be a different thing from the same mass of sound emitted from a less capacious bellows. In common language this difference is marked by the words loud and low.

The distinguished French naturalist, Professor H. Milne Edwards, in the ninth volume of his valuable Lectures on Comparative Anatomy and Physiology, published only last year, when referring to the fœtal membranes in the Cetacea, states, that much information is still required to complete our knowledge of that subject.

It may perhaps be advisable, before I commence to describe the results arrived at by my recent dissections, to give a brief account of the observations made by previous inquirers into this department of anatomy, so that we may more clearly recognise wherein our deficiencies lie, and the direction in which our researches ought to be conducted, in order to render our information as complete as possible.