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PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
ROYAL PHYSICAL SOCIETY
EDINBURGH.
1854-1858.
se
EDINBURGH: PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY BY NEILL AND COMPANY.
MDCCCLVILII,
ee eat ey pee ie y Sr ae ren a € +
II,
CONTENTS.
SESSION 1854-55.
November 22, 1854.
!
. Miller (H.), on the Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland,
Opening Address,
; Murray (A.), on a Curious ehit: of a Caieaien Wood-
pecker,
. Lowe (Wm. HL); Notice of Lepidaptorous captures near Edinburgh,
. Logan (R. F.), Notice of do.
. Smith (J. A.), Notice of Scops-Eared Owl (Scops Aldr cea)
shot in Sutherlandshire,
. Murray (A.), Notice of Ivory Gull (Larus eur neus) shot in
Caithness,
December 27, 1854.
Heddle (M. F.), on the Occurrence of Oxalates in the Mineral Kingdom, and Analyses of Conistonite and Hed- dlite,
. Miller (H.), on a Raised Sea Bottom near est . Geikie (A.), Liassic Fossils from Pabba and Skye, . Bryson (Alex.), on Worm-Tracks in Silurian Slates,
Office-bearers Elected for 1854-55,
January 24, 1855.
Bryson (Alex.), Discovery of Diatomacee in the Silurian Slates of Scotland, Bryson (Alex.), Notice on a gpecies of Nostoe or Sky- J elly, :
PAGE
GN Dd Oc >
iV
III.
IIL.
VI. VII.
VIII.
CONTENTS.
. Cobbold (T. S.), New Species of a Trematode Worm, with
Oheehvations of the Structure of Cercaria,
. Dassauville (P. A.), Notice of Gray Phalarope (Phataropus
lobatus),
. Heddle (M. F.), Analysis of Datholite,
February 28, 1855.
. Miller (H.), on the late Severe Frost, ‘ . Miller (H.), on the Silurian and Old Red F — ‘Ge Scot-
land, . Macdonald (Professor), on ‘the Homology of the Verona Skeleton, : ; , : :
March 28, 1855.
. Rhind (Wm.), on some Circular Mounds covered with
Metallic Slag in Morayshire,
. Rhind (Wm.), Contributions to the Hydrology of the Bete
Islands,
. Peach (Charles Ww. ),on the Discovery of Caleareous Zoophytes
in the Boulder Clay of Caithness,
- Murray (And.), on the Bark- poring Woodpeckers of Cali-
fornia,
. Heddle (M. E); Analysis u: Pectolite and Table Spar,
. Smith (J. A.), Notice of Gadwall Duck (Anas strepera), and of the Smew (Mergus Ts and of the Glaucous Gull (Larus glaucus), :
April 25, 1855. ;
. Fleming (Professor), Remarks on Rain-gauges, . Murray (And.), on Electrical Fishes, and Description of
Malapterurus Beninensis. (With a Plate),
(1.) Murray (And.), New Coleoptera from Quito, .
(2.) Murray (And.), Coleoptera taken in the Camp before Sebastopol,
. Goodsir (Professor), Anatomical Details of Malaptorurus
Beninensis
. Lowe (W. H.), on Monitor pulcher, Fulus mami, and
other specimens received from Old Calabar,
Heddle (M. F.), Analysis of the Morayshire Slag exhibited at last Meeting by Mr W. Rhind, :
Peach (Ch. W.), Notice of the Discovery of Fossils in the Limestones of Durness, Sutherlandshire,
Smith (J. A.), Notice of the Water Rail ae aquatiews) taken in British Channel,
Pace
14
14
VI.
VIL
CONTENTS.
SESSION 1855-56.
November 28, 1855.
. Fleming (Professor), Opening Address, . . Murray (Andrew), Notice of Leaf Insect (Phyllium scythe) ;
with Remarks on its Metamorphoses. (With 3 Plates),
. Cobbold (T. S.), on a Remarkable Pouched Condition on the
Glandule Peyeriane of the Giraffe. (With a Plate),
. Heddle (M. F.), Notice of the occurrence of Meteoric Lead
in Meteoric Iron, .
December 26, 1855.
. (1.) Logan (R. F.), Notice of the aca Pike ee
sauris), (2.) Smith (J. A. ), 2 Notice of do. do.
. Heddle (M. F.), on the Galactite of Hardinger, math
Analysis of Scottish Natrolites, .
. Cobbold (T. S.), Notice of a oe of Cod termed the Lord-
fish,
: M‘Intosh (Wm.), Notice of a curious habit of the Cuatinen
Seal,
_ Smith (John A.), UNotiea of the Herenpinens Duck (Wyroca
leucopthalomos) shot in the Firth,
Smith (John A.), Notice of the Mealy Red Poll aie canescens), near Edinburgh; and Notice of the Crested Grebe killed in the Tay,
Office-bearers Elected for 1855. 56,
January 23, 1856. Logan (R. F.), Notice on the late Stay of Swallows in 1855,
. Dassauville (P. A.), Notice of Arctic Skua (Lestris parasi-
ttca), shot in Skye,
. Heddle (M. F.), on Mesolite, Faroelite (Mesole), and Antri-
molite,
. Page (D. ), on Woodocrinus macrodactylus, a new genus
of Encrinite,
. Page(D.), on some New Gustece ss Forms from the Forfar
Flagstones, : Wardrop (J.), on Recent Discoveries in Be terennelags,
February 28, 1856.
Smith (J. A.), Notice of the Short Sun Fish (Orthagoriscus mola), and of the Porbeagle (Lamna cornubica), from the Firth of Forth, :
Pace
56 56
57
v1
i
II, IIT.
IL.
CONTENTS.
Heddle (M. F.), on Uigite, a new mineral,
Wardrop (J.), on the Scientific Bearings of Recent Dis- coveries of Helminthology,
Peach (C. W.), Notice of a curious Metamorphosis in a Zoophyte-like Animal
. Murray (A.), Additional information regarding Malaps
terurus Beninensis, from the Rev. H. M. Waddell,
. Wright (T.8.), on the Reproduction of Cydippe pomiformis, VI,
Wright (T. S.), on Two new Actinias from Arran (A. ornata, and A. bellis var. fusca). (With a Plate),
March 26, 1856.
Macdonald (Professor), on Zoological Classification,
. Murray (And.), Monograph of the Genus Catops,
Wright (T.S8.), on Gemniparous Reproduction in Actinia Diana!
. (1.) Macfarlane (J. >; Memorandum of Shells and a Deer-
horn found in a Railway-cutting in Dumbartonshire, (2.) Smith (J. A.), on do. do.,
April 23, 1856.
Wright (T. §8.), Description of two Tubicolar Animals. (With a Plate),
. Wright (T. S.), on the Existence of Bilateral Symmetry, and
a Longitudinal Axis in Actina,
. Wright (T.8.), on Caryophyllia Sh . Smith (J. A.), on the Scales of Holoptichiue ‘n maximus
found in Roxburghshire,
. Wright (T. 8.), on the Existence of Thread-cells in the
Tentacles of Cydippe,
SESSION 1856-57.
November 26, 1856.
I, Chambers (Robert), Opening Address, i IJ. Rankine (D. R.), on the Structure and Habits of the Slow
Worm (Anguis fragilis),
III. Wright (T. 8.), on Hydr actinia echinata. (With 2
Plates),
Pace
161
163 164
165
168 168
168
169
CONTENTS. Vil
Pace IV. Murray (A.), Description of New Ooleoptera from Western Andes. (With a Plate), Rie A £207 V. Murray (A.), Coleoptera from Old Calabar, : 222, 271 VI. Smith (J. A.), on a Variety in the Development of the Antlers of the Red Deer, : Bue) on a Variety of the Rabbit, . 222 December 24, 1856, Office-bearers Elected for 1856-57, : 222 Adjournment of Meeting in consequence of the ‘death of Hugh Miller, . 4 . : - 220
January 28, 1857.
Memorial to Government regarding the Purchase of Mr
Miller’s Museum, 223 Lowe (W. H.), Address on 1 the loge the Society had hictiined from the death of the late H. Miller, . 223 I. Wright (T. S.), Observations on British Zoophytes. (With 2 Plates), 226
II. Greville (R. K.), Notice of Dredgings i in Lamlash Bee. a Zor I. Wright (T.S.), on the Prehensile eae of ae Sete-
cornis. (With a Plate), 2238 IV. Smith (J. A.), Ornithological Natees: : . 240 V. Murray (A.), Notes on the British Species of Paiella, . 243
Februarg 25, 1857.
I, Murray (A.), on the Genus Atewchus, and its South American Representatives, 243 II. Taylor (Andrew), on the ‘contemporaneous Geolopical Age of the “‘ Mountain” and ‘‘ Burdie House’ Limestone Beds
of the Linlithgowshire Coalfield, i 244
III. (1.) Bryson (Alex.), Notice of the occurrence of Apophyllite at Ratho, 245
(2.) Bryson (Alex. ), on the Microscopical Saguane. of Lepi- dostrobi and Stiigmaria, 245
IV. Peach (Ch. W.), Notice of Discanaees in Marls near Wick, 245 V. (1. ) Smith (J. A.), Notice of the Horn of a Reindeer ood
in Dumbartonshire, 247 (2.) Smith (J. A.), Notice of the Wood Sandpiper (Totanus glareola) shot in Mid-Lothian, . 249
_ March 25, 1857.
I, Wood (Rey. oe on the ore of the a a of Elie, . ; 250
Vili
II. II.
Lee
II.
IV.
TI.
CONTENTS.
Pace Dalziel (Allan), Analysis of Three Waters from Palestine, . 215 (1.) Murray (A.), Fossils of the Lower Chalk from Van-
couver’s Island, : : : é ae (2.) Murray (A.), Description of Tetraodon a
from Old Calabar, . . - 200 Wright (T.8.), Observations on Beitich Zoophytes. (With
3 Plates), ; 253
Description of New Protozoa. (With 2 Plates), 258, 335
April 22, 1857.
. Logan (R. F.), Notes on Scottish Lepidoptera in 1855-56, . 258 . Fleming oe: on the Chalk Flints of the Forth, . 262 . Wright (T.8.), Observations on British Zoophytes. (With -
2 Plates), A 5 263, 338 . M‘Bain (J (James), on Fossils fave in a Bed of Shale below St Anthony’s Chapel, Arthur’s Seat, , : . 267 Thomas (Lieutenant), on Some New Starfishes, . 269 Forrest (George), on the Occurrence of the Otter near Duddingstone, . : . : .! 269
SESSION, 1857-58.
November 25, 1857.
Minute on the Death of Professor Fleming, ? . 343
. Lowe (W. H.), Opening Address, 344 . Murray (A.), Contributions to the Natural History of the
Hnudson’s Bay Territory. Part I., 347 (1.) Wright (T. S.), on Reproduction by Ova from the
Medusoid of Campanularia Johnstoni, 369 (2.) on Ephelota coronata, a New Protozoan Ani-
maleule, . 369
Thorburn (W. S), on Colias edusd from Dumfriesshire, - o42
December 23, 1857.
Office-bearers Elected for 1857-58, 372 . M‘Bain (James), on the Skull of a Wombat (Phastolangey
from the Bone Caves of Australia, with a few General Re-
marks on the Marsupiata, 373 Rose (Alex.), on the Discovery of emattts Tron Ore. on the
Garpel, Ayrshire, : : : : . Bee
5 s oo ila ea al ele
iT.
CONTENTS.
Cleland (John), on the Skeleton, Muscles, and Viscera of Malapterurus Beninensis. (With 2 Plates),
. Taylor (And.), on an Artesian Spring which has lately ap
peared on the banks of the Almond, Linlithgowshire,
January 27, 1858.
I. Lowe(W. H.),on the Occurrence in Scotland of the Achatina acicula,
II. Kelaart (E. F.), Introductory Report on the Natural History of the Pearl Oyster (Malcagrina margaritifera),
III. Oliphant (Wm.), on Lignite from the Ballarat Gold Field, and some recent Woods from Australia, . .
TV. (1.) Logan (R. F.), ee Notes for 1857, Lepi- doptera, _ - :
(2.) Wilson (And.), ‘do. do. Coleoptera,
V. (1.) Anderson (John), on the Genus Peltogaster, :
(2.) on the Occurrence of Galathea Andrewsii,
Februarg 24, 1858. I. (1.) Murray (And.), Tiliqua Fernandesi, a Lizard said to be venomous, from Old Calabar,
(2.) Observations on the Metamorphoses of Orthop- terous and Hemipterous Insects, Supplemental to previous Communication on the Leaf Insect, .
II, M‘Bain (J.), on the Skull of a Seal (Otaria Gillespit) from the Gulf of California, with some Preliminary Observa-
: tions on the Amphibious Carnivora,
III. Peach (C. W.), on the ee of Beckite and Oolitic
ey at Durness, : ‘ March 24, 1858. I. Lawson (Geo.), Remarks on Lutraria elliptica, :
II. Wright (T. S.), (1.) on Monecious Reproduction in Tubularia larynx ; (2.) on Hydra tuba and Myrothela artica,
III, Holmes (W. R.), and Campbell (H. ), Peper of an TBiicdi_ tion to Explore a Route by Rivers Waini, Barama, and Cuyuni, and the Gold Fields of Caratal, and thence to the River Orinoco, South America, ;
IV. Cleland (J), on the Spiral Threads of Hele aepersa,
Ny
. Smith (J. A.), Note on the Cuckoo (Ouwculus canorus) (Pellet
found in stomach),
April 28, 1858.
Incorporation of Wernerian and Royal Physical Societies,
1X Paqz 381 396
432
432
436
CONTENTS.
List of Members of Wernerian Society,
Report from Dredging Committee,
Note as to the Purchase of the Museum of the late Hugh Miller for the University, :
Rhind (Wm.), Notice of Coal found in ‘the Argillaceous Slate Quarries of Seil Island, Argyleshire,
. M‘Bain (Jas.), Remarks on a Baleen Whale captured off
the Bell Rock,
. Wright (T.S.), Observations on British Zoophytes. (With
2 Plates),
. (1.) Peach (C. W.), on tence ia aaa and its
Nidification, A Notice of Natural Printing of Sea-weeds on the Rocks in the vicinity of Stromness,
(2.)
. Smith (J. A.), Notice of the Sandy Ray (Raia spinosa),
taken off Wick,
. (1.) Forrest (Geo. ¥ Notice of Granite found in situ in Mid
Lothian : ; : (2.) Smith (J. A.), aos do.
. Davies (Jas. B.), Notes of some Experiments on ‘the Pre-
servation of Marine Radiata,
. Stewart (J. A.), Notice regarding the Food of Patella
vulgata,
. Carruthers (W. ), Dumfriesshire Gr aptolites, with ‘Deserts
tions of Three New Species,
. Livingston (John), on Poterioceras ventricosum io the
Carboniferous Limestone Beds near Gorebridge,
PaGe
LIST OF PLATES.
_ I. Malapterurus Beninensis, Hy, Tl. Phyllium Scythe, LIL, IV. Phylliwm Scythe. (Male), ee Do. (Female), VY. Peyerian Glands of Giraffe,
VIL Actinia ornata,
VII. Phoronis hippocrepia, and P. eis VIL, IX Hydractinia, é : : X. Coleoptera from Andes, XL, XI. Clava and Hudendriwm and Spio, XIII, XIV. Laomedea accuminata, ; ; = XV. Trichydra pudica, and Tubularia indivisa, XVI., XVII. Coleoptera from Old Calabar, <VIIL, XIX. British Zoophytes,— ee Fisthicols, Bete f lota, Coryne, &e.,
XX., XXI. Anatomy of Malapterurus Beninensis,
XI, a. Atractylis— Eudendrium, Laomedea,
ane
164 17) 209 226 258 258 271
339 359
447
by Si
=:
Me
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
ROYAL PHYSICAL SOCIETY.
EIGHTY-FOURTH SESSION, 1854-55.
Wednesday, November 22, 1854.—Hven Miter, Esq., President, in . the Chair.
The following Donations to the Library were presented, and thanks voted to their respective donors :-—
1. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Parts 1 and 2 of Vol. VII. From the Society.—2. Anatomical and Physiological Observations. By John Struthers, M.D. Fromthe Author.—3. On the Occurrence of Cinchonaceous Glands in Galiacew. By George Lawson, F.B.S.E. From the Author. .
I. Hueu Minter, Esq., the retiring President, delivered an opening address on “ The Fossiliferous Deposits of Scotland.” (This has been published as a separate pamphlet.)
Professor Fleming moved a vote of thanks to Mr Miller, which was unanimously agreed to, for the able and beautiful exposition of the pre- sent state of our knowledge of the geology of Scotland they had just heard, which he trusted they would be favoured with in a more permanent form. The Professor also alluded to the great loss the Society, and science in general, had sustained in the death of Professor Edward Forbes.
II. On a curious habit stated to have been observed in one of the Wood- peckers in California. By AnpREw Murray, Esq.
In this communication, Mr Murray stated he had received information on the habits of one of the Californian woodpeckers, which appeared to him both sufficiently new and interesting to be worthy of being made ge- - nerally known to naturalists ; and although the information is imperfect, and may possibly turn out to be incorrect, he was bold enough to com- municate it to the Society. The statement is, that a particular wood- pecker in California lays up a store of acorns in autumn for its spring consumption, and does so by hammering out small holes in the bark of
VOL. I. A
2 Proceedings of the
trees, into each of which it places an acorn. His informant was his bro- ther, Mr William Murray, whose botanical tastes may be probably known to some of the members of the Society. He resides at San Francisco ; but when home on a visit last year, he mentioned the habit of the wood- pecker which had just been related. Shortly after his return to Califor- nia, he received from him the piece of bored bark, which he exhibited to the Society, and at the same time communicated the following informa- tion which he had picked up. He says,—‘‘ I was talking to Simson the other day about the curious custom the woodpeckers here have of boring holes in the bark and storing them with acorns, when I mentioned that I had told you of it, and that you had refused to credit the fact, not of the acorns being there, but of their being put there by woodpeckers, because I was unable to say I had seen them put there. ‘ Well,’ said he, ‘ you can tell him that I’ve seen them. I have seen them bore the holes, put in the acorns, and hammer them well in, and I’ve seen them take them out again in spring ;’ and he went on to tell me, that, on one occasion, in the time of the great flood (some years ago), he had witnessed an amu- sing scene among them. His party were camped on a kind of island that had been left dry, and having nothing better to do, watched the opera- tions of these birds. There were six or eight of them at work on a tree, in which there was a squirrel, who had made his house in a hollow at the root of a branch. The squirrel would pop out his head and look at them, and the moment the coast was clear, he would run out and scratch away at these things, and tear away the bark; and when the birds would see him, they would all attack him, and he would run like lightning down the tree, and up the other side, and into his hole again, and then peep out and watch another chance to do the same, evidently having great fun. This continued for about three days, till at last one of the party knocked the squirrel’s head off with a rifle-ball, and rid them of their persecutor.” In a subsequent letter, his brother gives the following additional infor- mation. He says—‘‘ Newland, a Scotchman, told him he had often seen the woodpecker storing the acorns, and that it was a black bird with a red head ; but Simson, he said, would introduce me to Dr Trask (author of the geological report herewith sent), and that he would be able to say po- sitively. The Doctor stated that the provident woodpecker is the black one with the red head and yellow throat, that he had observed them re- peatedly, and further asserted that they eat acorns, and that he had seen them do it. In confirmation of the possibility at least of their being ve- getable feeders, Simson tells me that, in the western country, the far- mers frequently clear the woods by cutting the communication of the bark of the trees, and that, where that is done, these red-headed woodpeckers appear in the clearings in perfect swarms, and destroy apples and peaches in these districts to such an extent, that it is impossible to have any fruit. I do not know whether they eat the acorns or the grub that may be in them, but it is most certain that they bore holes in the bark, and hammer
Royal Physical Society. 3
jn the acorns so firmly, that you can hardly pick them out agam, and afterwards break them open, and eat something that is within the shell. The native Californians are so well acquainted with the fact, that they say when the woodpeckers commence early, it is a sign that we shall have a severe winter. They keep boring the holes all the summer, and are all ready for harvest when the acorns are ripe.’”’ His brother adds that Mr Simson came across Mexico with John Audubon (he presumed the son), who watched them, stuffed their skins, and knows all about them.
- They first observed these acorn deposits in Chihuahua. Mr Murray was
inclined to think that the evidence contained in these letters would be sufficient to satisfy the Society, as it had done himself, that there is good ground for believing that bona fide acorn deposits are in California stored up for future consumption by a woodpecker.
Dr Lowe moved that the thanks of the Society be given to Mr Wil- liam Murray, San Francisco, not only for the curious communication which had just been read by Mr A. Murray, but also for the various ser- vices he had from time to time rendered to the cause of physical science in general. And Mr Murray was requested to convey to his brother the thanks of the Socicty.
III. Notice of the Lepidopterous captures near Edinburgh, during the. past Season. By Wm. H. Lowe, M.D.
Dr Lowe having been appointed Convener of the Entomological Com- mittee at the last winter meeting of the Society, said, he thought that, although, from the small number of entomologists in Edinburgh, and those for the most part engaged in active professions, little had been accom- plished during the past summer, still he had several species of Lepzdop- tera to bring forward as new to the list published by him and Mr R. F. Logan in 1852. As his own captures, he mentioned Trachea piniperda (two specimens), Micropteryx unimaculella, Peronea Hastiana, Tinea Zinkenn. To these he had to add Pterophorus acanthodactylus, 1851, Argynnis selene, 1853, Satyrus davus, Hepialus velleda, Cabera exan- themaria, Huthemonia plantaginis, Xanthia rufina, Dosithea rever- saria, all which were owing to the industry of Mr Andrew Wilson of this city, and with the exception of Cabera exanthemaria, which had been previously taken by Mr Peter Fairbairn, as well as by Dr Lowe, were additions to the insects of this district. Dr L. also noticed Coccyx strobilana, which had been taken in a greenhouse at Newington, and which was traced to a basket of fir cones sent to Edinburgh by Mrs Scott of Gala. Among other insects also observed and taken this year were Macaria lhturaria, Spelotis cataleuca, Agrotis obelisca, A. putris, Caradrina morpheus, Hadena adusta, dc. There was also a fine series of Dosrthea scutularia, bred from caterpillars, and which, in that early stage of development, had been frozen hard, and left to thaw in the ordinary way, but which had, nevertheless, produced beautiful spe-
4 Proceedings of the
cimens. Another brood of caterpillars of a different genus, which had been similarly exposed, had entirely perished. The results of a day’s ramble in Castle Eden Dean, in the county of Durham, were included in the insects brought before the Society. Among them were Dosithea blomeri, Pyrausta Punicealis, Stiqgmonota trauniana, &e.
IV. Mr R. F. Logan exhibited specimens of Bombycia viminalis, bred from larve found in June on a dwarf sallow on the Pentlands; also a male Parasemia plantaginis, taken on the wing near the top of one of the hills on the same day. He also exhibited a specimen of the new Bri- tish Zygaena minos, from the collection of Dr Fleming, in which it had stood probably for the last twenty years, and which Dr Fleming said he had no doubt had been taken by himself in Fifeshire.
V. Notice of the Scops-Eared Owl (Scops Aldrovandi), Will. Orn., shot in Sutherlandshire. By Joun Auex. Smita, M.D.
This rare owl, which Dr Smith exhibited, was shot in the latter end of last May, at Morrish, near Golspie. In the general colour and cha- racter of its plumage it reminded him very much of the Nightjar; and is distinguished from our other British owls by its small size, by the incom- plete character of its fascial disk, by its having tufts or horns, and also by its rather long and slender legs, closely covered with short mottled feathers, which terminate at the junction of the toes, leaving the toes en- tirely bare. There is also a series of spots along the edge of the seapu- lars, the outer half of these feathers being yellowish-white with dark brown tips, contrasting beautifully with the closely mottled and minute- ly spotted and striped character of the rest of the plumage. It is a bird more especially of the southern and eastern portions of Europe, and from thence it migrates to Africa. Several instances have been reported of its occurrence in England.
VI. Mr A. Murray read an extract of a letter from Sir William Jardine, mentioning a capture of the Ivory Gull (Larus eburneus), shot at Thrum- — ster, Caithness-shire. It was sent to him by Mr R. Shearer, Borrowston, near Wick, who has thus added another specimen to the two or three which are known to have been killed in Britain.
Professor Gregory, Edinburgh University, was balloted for, and elected a member of the Society.
Wednesday, Dec. 27, 1854.—Professor Batrour in the Chair.
I. On the occurrence of Oxalates in the Mineral Kingdom. Analyses of two new Species. By M. Forster Heppxz, M.D.
At this time last year two oxalates were known in the mineral king- dom. The one, an oxalate of iron, was analysed by Rammalesberg, and
Royal Physical Society. 5
named by him Humboldtine; the other, an oxalate of lime, identical in composition with that ordinarily precipitated by the chemist, has been called after Dr Whewell. Some months ago Mr R. Greg of Norcliffe Hall sent Dr Heddle for analysis a few white crystals, which had been found, some five-and-twenty years ago, in a copper mine at the Old Man, near Coniston Lake, in Westmoreland. From a hasty examination of these, Mr Greg was led to suppose that he had found a new substance, and the analytical result proved that he wasright. Dr H. found the mi- neral to be an oxalate of lime, differing from Whewellite in having six additional atoms of water of crystallization. Associated with these white erystals was a purplish-red substance, which, appearing to him to be new, he submitted also to analysis, when it proved to be an oxalate of potash, with ten atoms of water of crystallization. The colour was due to some oxalate of cobalt. It is always desirable that a mineralogist should be able to account for the occurrence of every substance which comes under his notice. This is more especially the case when the substance is of an organic nature, and in general we have little difficulty in satisfactorily explaiming even such occurrences. The mineral Humboldtine, for in- stance, being found either embedded in lignite, or associated with decom- posing succulent plants, leaves no room for doubting that, as it is organic in its matrix, so also it is organic in its origin. He was afraid, however, that their ingenuity would be taxed rather severely to account for the three other oxalates which we are now acquainted with, two of these hav- ing been found deep in the womb of earth, associated with a metallic lode. He thought there could be little question that they were of secondary for- mation, having resulted in some way or other from the operations con- nected with the working of the mine; but he professed to be perfectly unable to offer any explanation which appeared even to himself to be satisfactory. One theory had been brought forward,—a theory which he could not but dissent from; it is, that the minerals were originally bi- carbonates,—that metallic potassium having been brought into contact with them, an atom of oxygen was abstracted, the result being necessarily oxalates. This did not appear satisfactory: neither bi-carbonate of lime or of potash had yet been found in nature; and he could not place him- self among those who, whenever they wished to account for volcanic action, or to get out of any difficulty, called in the aid of metallic potas- ‘sium, He was very far from thinking that no satisfactory theory could be brought forward, but he was content for the present to look upon the occurrence of these oxalates as one of many proofs that as yet we know but too little of the operations carried on in nature’s laboratory. The first of these minerals had been named, by Mr Greg, Conistonite, from the locality ; and the second Heddlite, after the analyst.
li. On a Raised Sea Bottom, near Filliside Bank, between Leith and Portobello. By Huexu Miurzr, Esq.
6 Proceedings of the
Ill. Exhibition of a Collection of Liassic Fossils from Pabba and Skye. By ArcuipaLp Getzie, Esq.
Mr Geikie laid on the table the fossils he had collected, which he illus- trated with the following remarks:—The Isle of Skye is an object of special interest -to the geologist, from its containing in tolerable abun- dance the remains of the liassic formation,—one which occurs in but unfrequent patches throughout the whole extent of Scotland. The lias, as developed in that island, stretches from shore to shore in a band about seven or eight miles in length, by from two to five in breadth. Over the greater part of this extent a dark peaty soil covers the strata, so that they are seldom discernible, save where channelled by some moun- tain torrent. The best exposures are therefore to be found at the extre- -mities of the belt. Broadford Bay, on the east, affords a general section of the formation. The beds are there free from the dislocating effects of trap dykes, and dip gently under the waters of the bay at an angle of 5°. The lowest members of the series are found at the village of Lussay, rest- ing unconformably upon the red sandstone of Sleat. They consist of con~ cretionary sandstones, and dark compact limestones, some of them charged with organic remains. But the most remarkable of these strata is one, irregularly three feet thick, composed entirely of corals of the family Astreide, which are bound together by an indurated mud. These organ- isms, of which there are several specimens upon the Society’s table, were described several years ago by Mr Miller.: They differ im size and abun- dance from any species in the lias of England, where corals are exceed- ingly rare; and they thus give a peculiar character and interest to the Scottish deposit. Beyond Lussay beds of sandstone and limestone alter- nate along the coast. Some of these abound with the characteristic shells of the period. At Breckish, for instance, where the limestone has been broken up in the course of constructing a road, the Gryphea incurva might be removed from the beach by ship loads. The same fossil, mingled with ammonites, belemnites, and pectens, is found in most of the strata as far as Corrie Farm, at the northern point of Broadford Bay, where they are buried beneath an extensive overflow of syenite. The upper mem- bers of the series are found forming the flat island of Pabba, about three miles out in the bay. Pabba, though not more than a square mile in ex- tent, forms, with its rich green pasture, a striking contrast to the dark, barren mountains of the surrounding shores. The lias is here repre- sented by a series of dark micaceous shales, dipping northward at the angle usual in this district, 5°. They abound with the organisms of the formation ; indeed, so richly charged are some of the beds as to emit a strong feetid odour when rubbed or broken—a fact likewise noticeable in the lias shales of Eathie. There is now on the table a set of these Pabba fossils. The majority have been already noticed by Murchison,
Royal Physical Society. 7
and figured by Sowerby ; but there are several which appear to be new. The most abundant organisms are the Pectens, of which there are at least three species. Other fossils are the Pentacrinites, Plagiostoma, and Terebratula, of each of which there are several species—Gryphea im- curva, and G. Maccullochi ; Pinna, probably of several species; Belem- nites, Ammonites, at least four species ; Serpule, &c. The state of keep- ing of the fossils varies considerably in the different beds. The ammo- nites exist, in some cases, as mere flattened impressions. Generally they present only the outer ring, the central portion of the dise having entirely disappeared. In not a few of the layers the condition of the organic re- mains seems to indicate protracted maceration—a conclusion rendered probable by the abundance of casts of the more tender species. The western coast of Skye, along the shores of Loch Slapin, presents a rich field of study to the geologist. The lias, for the space of several miles, is traversed in all directions by dykes and veins of basalt. In some places the limestone is black ; in others, of different shades of gray ; while inland, towards Kilchrist, it takes a snowy white; but in all cases it has been altered into a compact marble. A series of specimens upon the table exhibits the passage of a calcareous shale, abounding with Gryphea and Pecten, into a hard fossiliferous limestone, which in turn shades off through various hues of black and gray into a white crystalline marble, destitute of organic remains. The latter rock, as it hes in the quarries at Kilchrist, is not much inferior in colour to the best stone of Italy, though, after being cut and exposed for a few years to the air, it acquires a dirty yellowish tinge. The trap dykes are themselves a curious subject for investigation. Owing to the decomposition of the marble around them, some of large size are seen running up the hill sides like walls. Indeed, when two or three cross each other, the appearance presented reminds one of some ruined relic of the feudal times. Others may be found insinuating themselves among the cross rents of the contorted strata, and terminating in a point as fine as that of a pen. The shores of Loch Slapin are, on the whole, one of the most interesting localities in the island; and a careful examination of them would form a valuable contri- bution to Scottish geology. The district lies far out of the ordinary track of the tourist, and the accommodation, where it can be had, is not of the best ; but these disadvantages would doubtless be more than compensated by a ramble among the beautiful sections which abound in the creeks and caves of that solitary shore.
IV. On some Worm Tracks in Stlurian Slates. By Auex. Bryson, Esq.
Mr Bryson showed that considerable difficulty was felt in accounting for these curious appearances on the Silurian slates at Thornielee, Peebles- shire. They had been named by Professor M‘Coy Crossopodia Scotica, or fringe-footed animals. Sir Roderick Murchison described them as occurring of considerable length, even extending to yards. Mr Bryson
8 Proceedings of the
was of opinion that the length was merely due to a track made by a worm of about six inches long, in mud of a rather crisp than slimy condition ; and that the different appearances presented by the track, as compared with the surrounding matter, was due, not to the remains of the worm, but to dry dust blown into the track by the wind, on the recession of the ocean, which formed the lowest Silurian beds of Scotland. On the tracks found by Mr Bryson in the Llandeilo flags of Wales, he observed that many naturalists had mistaken for sete merely the effects caused by wind blowing light sand over tracks made by gasteropodous molluses; and stated, that tracks which he found at Port Rheudyn, in Wales, in almost the lowest beds of the Silurian slates, were quite identical with those he saw in the act of formation by the common Twrbo littoreus, on the sands of Tremadock, a few miles south of Port Rheudyn. Mr Bryson exhibited some very large slabs, showing numbers of these tracks, sent him by the kindness of Mr Chaffers, the lessee of the quarry at Port Rheudyn, Wales.
The following gentlemen were appointed the office-bearers for the session :—
Presidents.—Rev. John Fleming, D.D., Professor of Natural Science, New College, Edinburgh ; Robert Chambers, Esq.; William H. Lowe, M.D.
Council.— Andrew Murray, Esq., W.S.; John Coldstream, M.D. ; Patrick Dalmahoy, Esq. W.S. ; J. H. Balfour, M.D., Professor of Botany, University of Edinburgh; Hugh Miller, Esq.; Robert K. Greville, LL.D. |
Secretary.—John Alexander Smith, M.D.
Assistant-Secretary.—George Lawson, Esq.
Treaswrer.— William Oliphant, Esq.
Honorary Librarian.—Robert F. Logan, Esq.
Library Committce—Wm. Rhind, Esq.; John L. Stewart, Esq. ; Alexander Bryson, Esq.
Alexander Rose, Esq., Lecturer on Geology and Mineralogy, Edin- burgh, and David Page, Esq., were then elected members of the Society.
Wednesday, January 24, 1855.—Witiiam H. Lows, M.D., President, in the Chair.
The following Donations were laid on the table, and the thanks of the Society voted to the donors :—
1. Proceedings of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool. Vol. viii. 1853-4. From the Society. 2. (1.) Inaugural Address at the Opening of the Medical Society’s New Hall, 1852. (2.) Observations on the Canal of Petit. (3.) On the Embryogeny of Orchis mascula. (4.) On the Anatomy of Actinia. (5.) On the Anatomy of the Giraffe. (6.)
at ~<a
Royal Physical Society. 9
Anatomy of the Porbeagle Shark, Squalus cornubicus. By T. Spencer Cobbold, M.D. From the Author. 3. Literary Papers of the late Pro- fessor Edward Forbes. From Lovell Reeve, Esq., London.
I. On the Discovery of Diatomacee in the Silurian Slates of Scotland. By Atexanver Bryson, Esq.
In a former paper, read at the last meeting of the Society, Mr Bryson had indicated a hope that Diatoms might be found in the lower Silurian formations of Scotland, from the peculiar appearance resembling organ- isms which he observed in a microscopic section of the slate from Thornie- lee“Quarry, in Peeblesshire. One form is identical with a rare species found in the guano of Ichaboe, both in form and colour. In an endeavour to separate the alumina from the silica in the slate he had met with diffi- culties, as any solvent of alumina also acted on the silica of which he supposed the diatoms to consist. Dr George Wilson suggested the boil- ing of the powdered slate in Nordhausen sulphuric acid, which was found after a long time to isolate the silica. After many washings of the resi- due with distilled water, the author found several forms of diatomacee, two identical with living species, and four or five quite aberrant. After digestion with nitric acid the organisms seemed fewer, which he referred to their being more horny than silicious.
II. Notes on a Species of Nostoc or Sky-Jelly (specimen exhibited by Dr Heddle). By Atexanper Bryson, Esq.
Ill. Description of a New Species of Trematode Worm, with Observa- _ tions on the Structure of Cercarie. By T. Spencer Coszotp, M.D.
Specimens of the worm were exhibited. They had been obtained from the liver of a giraffe, and differed from all known species. Dr Cobbold illustrated his paper with numerous drawings, showing the minute ana- tomy of this worm, and also several embryonic forms of entozoa.
IV. P. A. Dassauvitte, Esq., exhibited a specimen of the Gray Phala- rope (Phalaropus lobatus, Lath.), which was shot in the Firth of Forth in December last. The bird was only beginning to assume its winter plumage, and appears to be rare in this locality.
V. Analysis of Datholite from Glen Farg. By M. Forster Heppiz, M.D.
Datholite, Dr Heddle said, had been found in the British islands in four localities, all of these being Scottish—first, by Mr Rose, on the yel- low prehnite of Salisbury Crags ; then at Glen Farg in Perthshire, asso- ciated with zeolites, and well crystallized ; next, upon prehnite, in what is mineralogically called the ‘‘ Greenockite Hole,” namely, the tunnel on the Glasgow and Greenock Railway ; and, lastly, at Corstorphine Hill, by Mr Forrest, within the last few years. It is a fact worth notice, that three out of these four are prennite localities. This might warrant a
VOL. I. B
10 Proceedings of the
searching examination for boracic acid in prehnite. In all these localities the mineral had been recognised by its crystallographic characters, no analysis of a British specimen having yet been published. A specimen from Glen Farg had been examined by Dr Heddle, and the analysis showed nothing different from those made of foreign specimens, with the exception of -28 per cent. of oxide of iron; and as a second analysis (made upon crystals apparently absolutely pure) gave 24 per cent., Dr Heddle was inclined to think that the iron is the colouring matter, givimg the mineral its light yellowish-green or asparagus stone tint.
The followmg gentlemen were then elected members of the Society :— James Wardrope, Esq.; Hugh Redpath, Esq.; Stevenson Macadam, Phases: :
Wednesday, February 28, 1855.—Rozsert CHampers, Esq., President, im the Chair.
The following Donations to the Library were laid on the table, and thanks voted to the respective donors :—1. (1.) Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Vol. XXI., Part I. Session 1853-4. (2.) Pro- ceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Session 1853-4. From the Society. 2. Transactions of the Michigan State Agricultural Society. 4 vols. 8vo. From the Michigan State Agricultural Society, through the Smithsonian Institute.
I. On the late Severe Frost. By Hucu Mitusr, Esq.
In the hope of attracting attention round our shores to one of those ¢a- tastrophes in the animal world which throw light on the disappearance of species in geological history, Mr Miller stated he had inserted in the Witness of last Saturday the following paragraph :—
‘<The present intense frost, coincident at new moon with a stream tide, has killed many of the littoral shell-fish around our shores, and they now lie by thousands and tens of thousands along the beach. On the beach below Portobello, and for at least a mile on the western side of the town, they are chiefly of two species,—Solen siliqua, or the edible spout- fish or razor-fish, and Mactra stultorum, or the fool’s cockle, both of them molluscs, which burrow in the sands above the low water line of stream tides. The spout-fishes, when first thrown ashore, were carried away by pail and basketfuls by the poorer people, and yet of their shells enough remain, in the space of half a mile, to load several carts; but the fishes themselves, devoured by myriads of birds, chiefly gulls, have al- ready disappeared. ‘The Mactra, though they may be picked up in some places by basketfuls, are less abundant. It is probable, however, that both species will be less common.on our coasts than heretofore for years to come ; and their wholesale destruction by a frost, a few degrees more intense than is common in our climate, strikingly shows how simply, by slight changes of climate induced by physical causes, whole races of ani- mals may become extinct. It exemplifies, too, how destruction may fall
Royal Physical Society. 11
upon insulated species, while from some peculiarity of habitat, or some hardiness of constitution, their cogeners escape. There are two species of Solen in the Firth, S. stdiqua and S. ensis ; but we-have not seen, on the present occasion, a single dead individual of the latter species ; and, of at least four species of Mactra, Mactra stultorum seems alone to have suffered.”’
He had, since the appearance of the above, several times visited the shores in the neighbourhood of Leith and Portobello, and now craved leave to bring before the Society a few additional facts. Up till Friday last, the dead shell-fish consisted almost exclusively of the two kinds spe- eified in the paragraph,—Solen siliqua and Mactra stultorwm. Since that time, however, considerable numbers of the smaller molluscs have also been thrown up dead upon the beach; and their later appearance, as he found their remains mingled with very young specimens of the de- stroyed Solen and Mactra, may have been the result rather of a mecha- nical than of what he might term a constitutional cause. The greater shells have been first driven ashore, from the circumstance, mayhap, that they presented a larger surface to the waves, and then the smaller, in- cluding, in considerable proportions, the young of the large ones. Among the lesser molluscs, destruction seems to have fallen more extensively on that delicate shell Tedlina fabula than on any of the others. Tellina tenuis has also suffered, but to a much less extent. Next to Tellina fa- bula, the mollusc of the smaller species that, in proportion to its number, has been most extensively destroyed, seems to be Donax anatinus. Hvery little pool has its numerous specimens of this shell lying gaping and dead. He observed also a few recently killed specimens of Macitra subtruncata, hut, considering the abundance of the shell on our sandy flats, only a very few; and also, what he had not seen in his previous walks, a few individuals of Solen ensis, but scarcely in the proportion of one to a hundred of its cogener Solen siliqua. ‘There were localities, too,—as immediately below the town of Portobello,—in which he found great numbers of the slim and delicate shells of Syndosmya alba still in- closing the dead molluscs. Among the univalves, he picked up a consi- derable number of lately destroyed specimens of Natica monilifera. There seems to be a peculiar circumstance in the history of this shell whieh still requires explanation. Fully nine-tenths of the specimens thrown ashore on our Leith and Portobello beaches, in a dead or dying state, have their lip edges fractured and broken, the gaps often im- pinging deeply into the inner space of the shell occupied by the mollusc. Of ten individuals of this species which he picked up on various parts of the beach on Saturday last, all exhibited the broken lip ; of twice that number picked up on Monday, only three. had the lip entire ; and as much weaker shells come unbroken to the shore, the mutilation must, he sus- pected, be regarded as the work of some unknown enemy. But the enemy which had killed these naticas was evidently the frost. Besides the mol- luses, some of the commoner crustaceans of our coasts appear to have suf-
12 Proceedings of the
fered from the severe cold. He found at two several places, about half- way between Leith and Portobello, great numbers of the common swim- mer crab (Portunus depurator) lying dead ; the common shore-crab, too (Carcinus meenas), seems, judging from the number recently killed, also to have suffered ; and in the perished Mactra he detected several speci- mens of that minute Pea-crab (Pemnotheres pisum), which finds shelter within the living shells, and which seem to have shared in the fate of their involuntary hosts. Among the dead crustaceans he found a newly killed specimen of the rather rare masked crab (Corystes cassivelaunus), a female laden with spawn.
He deemed it worthy of remark, that there are shells very abundant on the coast, and which, from their littoral character, must have been quite as much exposed to the intense cold as either Mactra stultorwm or Solen siliqua, of which he did not find a single dead specimen on the beach. Tellina solidula is one of these species, and Mactra solida, with its sub-species or variety Mactra truncata, another; and these the frost seems not to have in the least affected. Of the various littoral univalves, too, including the periwinkles, purpura, and trochide, only one species, Natica monilifera, seems to have suffered. Now, Tellina solidula is in some localities, as at Castleton King-Edward, one of the most nume- rous and best developed of the boreal shells; Mactra solida is also a boreal species, with the common periwinkle Littorina httorea), the com- mon purpura (P. lapillus), and the dog-periwinkle (Trochus cinera- yius). Again, on the other hand, of the destroyed shells, he had not yet found any trace of Tellina fabula or Donax anatinus in the old glacial deposits, such as the boulder clay or Gamrie gravels and sands, nor yet of Mactra stultorum or Solen siliqua, though the former is said to be a shell of the Mammiferous Crag, and the latter of the Clyde beds. And though a large natica occurs in both the Caithness and Gamrie deposits, that very considerably resembles Natica monilifera, it fails to exhibit the characteristic flexuous streaks, and, in general form, seems at least as much akin to a sub-arctic species as to the one recently killed by the frost. And there could be, he thought, no doubt that the boulder clay Tellina, T. proxima, is altogether a different species, notwithstanding its points of similarity in the more dwarfish individuals from Tellina tenuis. None of the molluscs killed in any considerable abundance by the present in- tense frost seem to be truly boreal species ; and their destruction by the refrigerating agent, which has strewed them by millions along the beach, seems not only strikingly illustrative, as he had said, of one of the modes in which species may be destroyed, but also of a curious passage in the later geologic history of northern Europe. It is an ascertained fact, that shells were living in the British area during the times of the Red Crag, of the same species with those recently killed by the frost ; Mactra stu- torwm is one of these, and Natica monilifera another, and they now live in the neighbouring firth ; but he at least had failed, after sedulous ex- ploration, to detect them in the intermediate period of boreal shells, ice-
7<
Royal Physical Society. 13
grooved surfaces, and the boulder clay, a period during which some of their hardier cogeners were very abundant. And the catastrophe which has just destroyed them in such numbers shows in part how this passage in our geologic history may have taken place.
Such a depression of a few hundred feet of the North American conti- nent as that suggested by Mr Hopkins, would have the effect of diverting the course of the great Gulf Stream into what is now the valley of the Mississippi, and of sending it northwards over the Lake District into Hudson’s Bay and the Polar Seas. The heating agent, which has been said to throw as much caloric in a single day into the Atlantic as would raise the temperature all over France and Britain from the average of that of winter to that of summer, would be lost, in consequence, to Eu- rope; and, left to the natural effects of our high latitudinal position, whole races of the existing molluscs would die in our seas. Scenes such as the one which we witnessed during the recent frost would occur with every returning winter, until only the hardier shells would continue to survive, and gradually and slowly, northern shells, not now living on our coasts, or occurring in but scattered patches and outliers, such as Panopea Norvegica, Tellina proxima, Pecten Islandicus, and Astarte arctica, would take the places of the perished ones. Our Fauna would become a sub-arctic one, like that which now lives in the same parallel on the coast of Labrador, or like that whose remains we find locked up.m the Pleisto- cene deposits of Banffshire, or in the boulder clays of Caithness. And then, an elevation of the American valley to its present level, or to a level approximating its present one, would again give us back the Gulf Stream. A reverse process would take place among our molluscs; the sub-arctic ones would gradually die out in the over warm water, and shells of the same species with those previously killed by the cold would gradually propagate from the southern localities, to which they had been restricted, and occupy their old areas as before. And such, judging from the data furnished by our later deposits, from the Red Crag downwards, seems to have been the geologic history of northern and western Europe. Independently, however, of these views, though he could entertain no doubt that they are ultimately to prevail, any catastrophe illustrative of the extinction of species must be of interest to the geologist. To the mystery of creation he could not attain ; but the twin problem of extinc- tion appears to be a solvable one. That law through which, judging from the past, all species are as certainly destined to die as all individuals, seems fairly to belong to the field of experience. He had already referred this season, in one of his communications to the Society, to that myste- rious disease which, selecting one of our most useful vegetables, destroyed it over wide areas, and by billions of individual plants, as mayhap illus- trative of one of those agents of death through which whole species are exterminated ; and the late severe frost, which, equally, though less re- sirictively, selective of species, has strewed our shores with heaps of dead shell-fish, seems not less illustrative of another and better appreciable
14 Proceedings of the
agent. It shows how, through those physical changes which have been taking place in every geological era, and which, by altering the geogra- phy, have also altered the climate, of wide regions, whole races may have _ been extinguished.* a
IL. On the Silurian and Old Red Floras of Scotland. By Hueu Miter, Esq.—Mr Miller illustrated his paper by the exhibition of a most interesting collection of the fossil remains of these little-known plants.
III. On the Homology of the Vertebrate Skeleton, and tts representa- tive Eso-Skeleton of the Invertebrate Classes, with the application to Zoology, Paleontology, and Geology. By Professor M‘Donatp.—The Professor exhibited a numerous collection of osteological preparations and diagrams in illustration of his peculiar views.
Wednesday, 28th March 1853.—Professor FLtemine, President, in the Chair.
The following Donation to the Library was presented from the Author : —‘‘A List of the Mollusca hitherto found in the Province of Moray.’ By the Rev. George Gordon, Birnie.
?
I. Of Some Circular Mounds, covered with a Metallic Slag, which occur on the Sloping Sides of the Gneiss Hills, Parish of Birnie, Moray- shire. By Witt1am Rutnp, Esq. (A specimen of the slag was exhi- bited.)
Several deposits of this metallic matter occur in circular, somewhat ele- vated, mounds, about four feet in diameter, lying upon the moss-soil of the moors, both in this locality and in some of the moorland slopes of the country to the westward, the vague traditions of the county being that they are the remains of iron-works, used by the armies that had in former times passed over the country. A discussion ensued, in which Professor Fleming, Mr Alexander Rose, and others, took part, on the probable cause of the formation of this metallic matter,—whether it was accumulated by fires occurring in the moors, or by solution, and subsequent deposition
* On the night of the 16th ultimo, the thermometer of the Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, stood as low as 1° above zero. Mr Miller was informed, however, by Mr George Berry, Rosefield Cottage, who, in the behalf of science, carefully notes the ex- tremes of temperature in the Portobello district, that the greatest cold indicated du- ring the late frost, at nearly the level of the sea, in the locality in which so many molluses were killed, was 92° above zero during the night of the 15th-16th, and 9}° during the night of the 16th-17th. On the coast of Labrador, in the same latitude, the sea freezes every winter for many miles from the shore, and the ice, even in mid- summer, never melts in the ground beneath a certain depth, but forms a rock-like subsoil. It is thus evident that the shells killed by the recent frost at Portobello could not live in the same parallel on the American coast,
Royal Physical Society. 15
from water. Similar slags were exhibited by Professor Fleming from Maryeulter, Aberdeenshire. An accurate analysis of the mineral was re- commended, and a report to be given in to the Society at its next meeting.
II. Contributions to the Hydrology of the British Islands. By Wiuu1am Rainn, Esq.
The peculiar position of the British Islands, in the great trough of the North Atlantic, by which they are brought within the influence both of the Gulf Stream and of the equatorial air currents, has a marked effect in modifying their climate. By both these influences the winter tempera- ture is greatly mitigated, in comparison with that of the corresponding parallels on the Continent of Kurope and Asia, while the intensity of the summer heat is also tempered by the surrounding ocean. For fully two- thirds of the year the prevailing winds in Britain are the south, south- west, and north-west. The south-westerly winds are predominant from June to the end of December, while the easterly current prevails from March to the endof May. The southerly winds originating in the tropics, and blowing over the Atlantic Ocean, whose temperature is kept up by the influence of the Gulf Stream, are of elevated temperature, and highly charged with moisture. The north-easterly winds, on the other hand, coming from circumpolar regions, and blowing over a long tract of con- tinent, are chill and dry. To the contact and opposition of those two cur- rents then, as is well known, we owe to a considerable extent our rainy weather ; the cold east wind becoming the condensing agent. But we shall find that besides the north-easterly currents there are other condensing agencies constantly at work.
‘In collecting materials for the Hydrology of the British Isles, in con- nection with Mr Keith Johnston, for the second edition of his Physical Atlas, the author had obtained, from published and unpublished sources, upwards of one hundred records of rain stations and temperature. These amounts were marked down in their respective positions on the map of Britain, and this map was coloured with light and dark shades according as the amount of rain-fall was small or large in the locality. The map he exhibited showed, in the first place, what had been already done, and what parts of the country yet remained to be filled up by observation and re- gistration. A considerable portion of the surface of Britain and Ireland was observed to be dotted with figures, but a large part of Wales and the north-west coast of Scotland were deficient. If we take three waving lines along the map of Great Britain we shall meet with three gradations of rain-fall. The line along the east coast, and penetrating some way into the interior, marks out the region of least deposition. On the whole eastern side of England, from Kent and Surrey, and Oxford, north to York, the average annual fall of rain is 23 to 24 inches. From Durham, north into Scotland, the mean fall is 27 inches, though in some localities, as Mid-
_ Lothian and Morayshire, the rain-fall is from 24 to 25 inches. The mean
annual rain-fall of the whole eastern half of Great Britain is 27 inches.
16 Proceedings of the
If we take a middle line, which includes the mountain range that traverses England from south to north, and extends through the centre and west of Scotland, we find that here is the greatest amount of deposition. In the mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, from 50 to 140 inches of rain fall annually. South of this range throughout England, from 36 to 46 inches are deposited. In Scotland, from the Lowther Hills to the mouth of the Clyde, from 47 to 50 inches. A third line embraces the west coast near the level of thesea. At Land’s End, the annual fall is 42 inches, in Exmoor, 56 inches. As we proceed farther north, the mean fall de- creases to 88 and 35 inches. Taking the western half of Britain, includ- ing the mountain regions, the annual mean of the rain stations is 45°5 inches, but considering that there is a deficiency of data for the elevated regions of Wales and the north-west of Scotland, and a preponderance of coast stations where the fall of rain is moderate, we may suppose that the actual fall for the western half of Britain is at least 5 or 10 inches more than this average ; that is, from 50 to 55 inches. We thus see that the moun- tain regions of Britain, by their superior elevations, compared with the valleys and plains, and by the consequent diminution of their surface tem- perature, become the condensers of the moisture of the warm and moist southerly winds. From the interesting data of Mr Miller of the Lake district of England, it is also demonstrated that the greatest amount of deposition takes place at an elevation of 1900 feet, and above this, the fall of rain rapidly diminishes.
In Ireland the greatest amount of rain-fall occurs on the south-west coast, 59 inches falling in the vicinity of its highest range of mountains. In the low lying central plain of Ireland the annual fall is 23 and 24 inches, while on the mountain ranges of the north-east and south-east from 30 to 37 inches fall. ;
If we divide the year into three periods of four months each, beginning the winter period with November, we shall find that most rain falls in the summer and winter months, and least in spring. This is shown in the following tabular view :—
Spring. | Summer. | Winter.
_ Inches. Inches. Inches.
Penzance, Cornwali, . .. . 12-2 13°5 17-4 Keswitk ou sas eke hee nee 16:0 24:0 19:9 GlaSSOWs 9. eo ee oe eee 8°3 9°8 15:5 Gilmourton, Lanarkshire, . . 11°6 17-3 18°8 Glencorse, Pentlands, . . . |. 102 14:3 11°6 Tondony) te. BA) sare eae 6:7 9:2 8-9 Boston; | 265-5 eect eee 7:2 9-4 6:5 SVIGTR., 6): 02 8 chy tak met me Caethee anre 73 10-0 MS I
On the east coast there are during the year 165 days on which rain falls; on the west coast there are 212 days on which rain falls. The greatest
Royal Physical Society. Ls
depth of rain noted to have fallen in twenty-four hours, is from 14 to 23 inches. At Kendal, in 1792, 43 inches fell. Our longest continued rains usually begin on the south and west of Great Britain, and proceed north- wards. This occurs when an easterly and south-west current both prevail in the atmosphere. In these cases it sometimes takes several days before the dry east wind becomes saturated with moisture, and rain begins to fall on the eastern coasts. Hence the popular idea that our greatest rains come from the east, whereas, in reality all the deposited moisture comes with the southerly current, and the cold east wind acts merely as the con- densing agent,
In the end of the year we generally have a south-west wind prevailing, often with great violence, somewhat in the form of a monsoon. About a month or six weeks after the autumnal equinox, when the sun has pro- ceeded so far in its south declination, the atmosphere of the whole northern part of Asia, hemmed in on the south by the highest barrier of mountains in the world, becomes cooled down to a very low pitch. This highly con- densed atmosphere then begins to make its way southward by the east of Asia, and forms, in fact, the north-east monsoon of the Peninsula of Hin- dustan and the Eastern Archipelago. To supply this eastward current, a south-west current rushes from the equatorial regions, and sweeps over the North Atlantic, passing over Britain and the middle of Europe. This continues more or less during the months of November and December, and is accompanied by a great deposition of moisture. An equilibrium of the northern atmosphere is brought about in our mid-winter, and then eommences the season of our northerly and easterly winds. In so far the laws of our apparently inconstant climate may be wrought out. The average direction of winds, and the temperature and fall of rain, in a series of 15 or 20 years, will be found to be remarkably constant. There are, however, occasional irregularities either of mild or severe, of dry and wet seasons, which are not so easily referable to any known or defined laws. It has been beautifully demonstrated by Professor Dove, that as respects the temperature of the whole globe, and also the respective hemi- spheres, there is a perfect uniformity year after year: Thus, that the same amount of warm currents passes yearly from the equator to the poles, while this is balanced by equivalent currents of cold air from the poles to the equator. These respective currents, however, as regards our northern hemisphere, may pass in varied lines of longitude. So that while in the meridian of Europe we may have for one or more successive years an ex- cess of the southerly currents, these currents in other years may pass along the meridian of America, or of the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. That such variations actually take place, there can be no doubt, and more extended observation is daily more precisely defining and recording these occurrences ; but the laws which regulate these variations yet remain un- solyed, and are perhaps of too refined and complicated a nature to come within the grasp of man’s limited observation,
YOL. I, c
18 Proceedings of the
III. On the Discovery of Caleareous Zoophytes in the Boulder Clay of Caithness, N.B. By Cuartes W. Peacn, Esq., Wick.
Zoophytes have not hitherto been discovered in the boulder elay of Caith- ness, but the author laid before the Society specimens of two species, one found by Mr Dick at Thurso, the other by himself in the scaur in Wick harbour. The former, which was much rubbed, proved to be the Leprala sumplex of Johnston, the latter the Lepralia Peachii, both of which now exist in our seas. The only perceptible difference between the recent and ancient specimens, is, that the latter have thicker walls to their cells, pro- bably as a provision against the boreal clime and more troubled seas they were denizens of. Besides this addition to the fauna of the boulder elay, he mentioned that its flora has yielded some of those curious caleareous plants, the Melobesia. He proposed in a future communication to lay be- fore the Society the details of a microscopic examination of these plants.
IV. Anprew Murray, Esq., then read a short notice he had received from Sir W. Jardine on the Bark-boring Woodpeckers of Califormia.
V. Analyses of Pectolite from Mourne Mountains,and Table Spar from Girvan. By M. Forster Hepptez, M.D.
These analyses have already appeared in the Philosophical Magazine for April and June 1855, pp. 248 and 452.
VI. Dr Jonn Arex. Smitx exhibited an adult male, female, and young male of the Gadwall duck (Anas strepera), shot on the Forth, near Kin- eardine, in the beginning of this month; Captain Ord, 42d Highlanders, to whom he was indebted for being able to exhibit these ducks, which appear to be very rare visitors to this country, was attracted by their un- usual appearance in the shop of Mr Muirhead, poulterer, Queen Street. Dr Smith had made particular inquiries at Mr Muirhead, who informed him there could be no mistake as to the locality the birds came from. He might mention it was only in very open winters the poulterers required to get supplies from foreign markets, while in severe seasons like the pre- sent there was no scarcity of birds nearer home, to be procured at much less expense. Dr Smith also exhibited two adult males of the Smew (Mergus albellus, Linn.),—these birds, which are rarely seen in Scotland, were killed near Mountblairey on the River Doveron, in Banffshire, in Fe- bruary and March ; and a specimen of the Glaucous Gull, Larus glaucus, taken on the Firth of Forth last autumn.
Wednesday, 25th April—Rozsrert Cuampers, Esq., President, in the Chair.
I. Remarks on Rain Gauges, with the view of securing Comparable Observations. By Professor Fiemine.
In this communication, made at the request of the Society, Professor
Royal Physical Society. 19
Fleming remarked that the expensive forms in which rain-gauges were usually constructed, making their price range from two to four guineas, rendered these instruments comparatively rare. The gauge which he re- commended and exhibited to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 16th April 1849, was fully described in the Hdinburgh New Philosophical Journal for July following. In its most expensive form, and made of copper, by Mr James Bryson, optician, Princes Street, it will cost about L.1. Its price, however, could be reduced one-half, or even three-fourths, by con- structing it of sheet zinc or common tinplate. The position of rain- gauges was next adverted to by the Professor, who stated, that visiting the Isle of Glass, in the Hebrides in 1821, and questioning Mr Reid, the keeper of the lighthouse, as to the working of a rain-gauge which had re- cently been erected, according to the form used at the other stations, he was assured that its indications were trustworthy in calm weather ; but during rain with wind, his boat in the neighbourhood was often filled with water, while the gauge remained nearly empty, adding that the rain- drops which at such a time fell into the funnel were swept out again by the eddy wind. Reflecting on this circumstance, and others of a similar kind, Professor Fleming became convinced that rain-gauges placed on the tops of houses, or even a few feet above the surface of the ground, were comparatively useless. The late Mr Thom of Ascog, in Bute, arrived at the same conclusion, so that the gauges which he employed in estimating the quantity of available water for mill-dams were sunk into the ground in a grass plot, the mouth of the funnel being nearly level with the surface. In this position the disturbing influence of the wind is removed, while the equable temperature of the ground prevents the evaporation in the cylindri- cal receiver. The rain-gauges employed at the lighthouses ‘‘are elevated 43 feet above the ground;” and Mr Thomas Stevenson, C.E., having issued queries to the keepers, received, among others of a similar kind, the following answers:—‘‘ Lighthouse, Inchkeith— When the wind is high, no snow and very little rain goes into it.” ‘ Buchanness.— When there is little or no wind, it is pretty near the truth; the more wind, the further from the truth.” The gauges referred to by Dr Miller in his paper on the Meteorology of the English Lake District (Hd. Trans. xxi., p. 81) appear to be placed two feet above the ground, and are thus ob- jectionable in their position, and the accuracy of the indications doubtful. The author stated as the result of experiment, in accordance with theo- retical considerations, that rain-gauges need not exceed three inches in diameter, that the trouble attending them may be limited to emptying them once-a-month, and that the index rod, if divided into tenths of an inch, is sufficient for all practical purposes. The eye with a very little practice can easily read off to one-fourth of a tenth, a difference often greater than the amount of rain falling at the same time within short distances. He mentioned that gauges of the description which he had re- commended were being established in different parts of the country. Twelve parish schools in Annandale were furnished with them by Mr
20 Proceedings of the
Bryson, for his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, and the results; according to Mr Stewart, Hillside, Lockerby, have been satisfactory. In conclusicn, he remarked that trustworthy observations would not be secured, for generalizations respecting the distribution of rain, until some simple, easily constructed, and inexpensive but aceurate form of gauge be adopted, such as he believed his instrument to be; and sunk in agrass plot, as free from the influence of trees, buildings, or local currents of wind as prac- ticable, the grass around the funnel being occasionally trimmed. .
Il. On Electrical Fishes ; with a description_of a new Species of Malap- terurus from Old Calabar, received from the Rev. Hope M. Waddell, Missionary there. By Anprew Murray, Esq., W-S. |
This paper, which will be found én ewtenso in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, New Series, vol. ii., commenced with a re- | view of what is known on the subject of electrie fishes. After narrating the various discoveries made by Walsh, Cavendish, and others, down to Faraday’s recent investigations, Mr Murray passed in review the different fishes to which electric properties belonged, or were supposed to belong, describing the electrical organs peculiar to each as he went along :—The Raia torpedo (Torpedo vulgaris), Torpedo galvani, T. trepidans, T. hebetans, T. marmorata, Narcine brasiliensis, N. indicus, N. timlei, N. tasmaniensis, Astrape capensis, and A. dipterygia, were specified as belonging to the Ray family, and the singular organ in the tail of the skate was commented on. The Rhinobatis, the Gymnoti, (G. electricus, G. fasciatus, and G. equilabiatus), were severally noticed. The experi- ments on the G. electricus, and discoveries made through them, being de- tailed at some length. The title of the Trichiurus electricus and Tetro- don electricus, to be considered electric fishes, was next discussed, and, after giving some interesting details relating to the Silurus glanis, as representing the family to which the Malapterurz belong, Mr Murray narrated what was known of the Malapterurus electricus found in the Nile, and, from evidence which he quoted, expressed his conviction that there were more species of Malapterurus than the Nile species. In con- clusion, he gave. the description of a new species sent to him from Old Calabar by the Rev. H. M. Waddell of the United Presbyterian Church Mission stationed there. And to it he had given the name of WV. Beni- nensis, as marking the locality in which it had been discovered (see Plate). From the description given, it appeared that the principal differences be- tween the Malapterwrus electricus and this species are the following: The former is a larger fish, reaching 14 and even 21 inches in length, while the ordinary dimensions of this would appear to be from four to eight inches. The formula of the number of rays in the fins of the two | fishes also differ. 'The number in the ventrals and caudal are the same, but the Nile fish has nine in the pectoral and twelve in the anal, while in this fish there are respectively only eight and eight. In the M. elec-
“WHOV18 0 6 ¥ HOXUNENIGS
ae ‘Aermy| SISNENINGE SOUNSELAVIVIN THLE Ye DAEHS
Royal Physical Society. 21
tricus, the upper jaw slightly projects over the under. In this species the reverse is the case, the lower jaw projecting decidedly (though not very far,) in advance of the upper. The barbule on the upper jaw of MW. electricus is a third shorter than the head ; Beninensis has it longer than the head.
_ Inthe former the gill-opening terminates at the lower edge of the pectoral
fin, in the latter the pectoral fin is attached at the middle of the gill- opening, and its lower edge does not nearly reach the base of the gill- opening. It will also have been seen that there are some differences in the relative proportion of the different parts of the two fishes, and there are also some other differences in the form of some parts of the fishes (such as the operculum) which are not so readily embodied in words, but the differences which will most easily enable them to be distinguished at a glance are the markings, if these shall be found to be constant. The spots on WM. electricws are much larger and more numerous than on this species, and it entirely wants the white bands across the tail, and across the caudal fin, which were described by Mr Murray.*
TI. Mr Murray exhibited a collection of Coleoptera, which he had re- ceived from Mr Jameson, Professor of Chemistry at Quito. Among these were Oxychila bipustulata, Phaneus conspicillatus, Semiotus unpe- rialis, and other known Columbian species, but a number were new to him, and apparently undescribed.
‘Mr Murray also exhibited a few Coleoptera, taken by his friend Cap- tain Macneill, of the 20th Regiment, in the camp before Sebastopol during the past winter. These included fine specimens of Hammaticherus heros, Lucanus serricornis, and some other species, which, besides their beauty and rarity, possessed an additional interest from the locality and circum- stances in which they were collected.
IV. Anatomical details of the new species of Malapterurus. By Professor Goopsir.
Professor Goodsir stated, that as he had only received the specimen of Malapterurus a day or two before the meeting, it was impossible for him to do more than merely make a few remarks on the subject. He would, however, be glad to give a detailed communication to the Society next session, after he had made a careful dissection of this very interesting fish. The Professor then, after reviewing shortly the results of Pacini’s recent examination of the electrical organs of Torpedo, Gymnotus, and Malapterurus, and his own examination of the presumed electrical organ in the tail of the skate, discovered by Dr Stark, and subsequently described by Robin, stated that, so far as his own dissection had proceeded, the struc- ture of the specimen of Malapterurus, for which he had been indebted to Mr Murray, corresponded to the description of Pacini, with the exception of
* Since Mr Murray’s paper was read he has received older and larger speci- mens from Old Calabar, from which he finds that these white bands disappear in the full-grown fish.
22 Proceedings of the
the structure of the electrical organs themselves, in which he had hitherto failed in detecting lozenge-shaped plates or octahedral cells, but could make out only a fine fibrous meshwork, permeated by a gelatinous granu- lar substance, as had been previously stated by Geoffroy. The presumed inner electrical organs he found, as Pacini had described, to be merely fibrous membranes, with subjacent fatty deposits.
V. Dr Lowe exhibited some interesting specimens sent home by the Rev. Mr Waddell. Among these was a lizard, evidently belonging to the Monitor class of lizards. It was about a foot in length, and beautifully banded and spotted, bearing a close resemblance to the figure given in the ninth volume of Cuvier’s Animal Kingdom as Monitor pulcher of Leach, but differing from that species by the rings on the tail being continued to the extremity. Two large myriapods,—one, which appeared to be Julus maximus, was about seven inches long, having fifty-four rings. It was a male, the very remarkable organs of reproduction being very conspi- cuous on the sixth ring. The last rmg but one was prolonged so as to almost form a tail. On each leg, except on the first three or four pairs and on the last seven or eight, was a remarkable gland-like body, situate on the joint immediately before the claw. These were probably analo- gous to the kodies observed in the foot of flies, and for the same purpose, viz., to assist in walking. The other Julus was evidently a female, as shown more particularly by the fringes on the sixth rig. This specimen measured no less than nine inches, and had sixty-six sealesorrings. AI though a difference of sex might account for some variety of appearance, Dr Lowe had no doubt that this specimen belonged to a distinct species. In particular, he pointed out the beantiful sculpture to be observed upon its surface, and the greater length of the antenne. The penultimate segment also was not in any degree prolonged, and the legs were provided with two instead of one of the gland-like bodies already mentioned. Lastly, Dr Lowe showed two cockroaches of an unusual appearance, and some spiders, the whole of which had been sent by Mr Waddell, to whom the Society had al- ready been so much indebted for various objects of the highest interest.
VI. Analysis of the Morayshire Slag, exhibited by William Rhind, Esgq., at last Meeting. By M. Forster Heppiez, M.D. .
The author stated that the extreme brittleness of this substance, the number of vesicular cavities, the pavonine lustre of its fracture, and the separation of minute specks of metallic iron, showed that it was indubitably a slag. In the qualitative analysis he obtained silica, alumina, lime, oxides of iron and manganese, magnesia, potash, soda, and a trace of phos- phoricacid. The quantity of silica is 24-045, of alumina 14-410, of lime 2-184 ; the proportions of magnesia, potash, and soda being small, he did - not determine, and the large excess obtained in the analysis, when the iron was calculated as perowide, showed that a considerable portion of it (about
Royal Physical Society. 23
one-third) must have been present in the metallic state ; the total quan- tity calculated as metal is 52°370; the manganese he did not separate from the iron, because the quantity was small, and could not in any way affect the decision that the substance was a slag.
Upon the whole, the opinion of Dr Fleming, as stated at last meeting, seemed to be established, that the substance in question was neither an ore of manganese nor a bog ironore, buta slag arising from the burning of a bed of peat during a dry season, melting a ferruginous soil. .
VII. Notice of the Discovery of Fossils in the Limestones of Durness, in the County of Sutherland. By Cuartes W. Pracu, Esq., Wick, Corresponding Member of the Royal Geographical Society of Cornwall. (The Fossils were exhibited.)
The author, after stating that the limestone beds of West Sutherland- shire had been referred by Mr Hugh Miller to the old red sandstone for- mation, although the absence of fossils had prevented his asserting this positively, stated that he had been fortunate enough to detect in the lime- stone of Durness distinct traces of spiral shells, probably Gonatites or Clymenie, which exist, though not abundantly, between Balnakiel and the Kyle of Durness. He had found these fossils from the Auld Kirk yard of Balnakiel, to nearly a mile towards the Kyle of Durness, and some distance inland, as well from the level of the beach to 200 feet above. In the field wherever the limestone showed, he found them. It was true he got but few,—the hardness and splintery fracture of the limestones, with the short time he had to spend there, prevented him from doing more. He ventured no opinion as to the age of the rocks, nor any speculation regard- ing them, for it would require much more information than he at present possessed, before doing so. Besides the whorled shells, coral-like markings were very abundant, as well as the pipe-like forms found by Mr Miller in the quartz rocks of Assynt. He found amongst the blocks scattered over the face of the country around Durness, and on the tops of the dykes, several containing these strange forms, and he immediately detected their similarity to those he had found at Goran Haven, Cornwall, in the quartz rocks. The Cornish ones he described in a paper published by the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall, as like the sandy tubes made by the Sa- bellaria alveolata, so abundant on that coast, and occasionally found on all the coasts he was acquainted with. He still saw the resemblance in the Sutherland ones, and it would be a very interesting fact if, besides these ‘‘ pipes,’’ Trilobites, Orthide, &c., should be found in the Assynt quartz, as well as the Cornish.
Mr Hugh Miller stated at the close of Mr Peach’s paper, that he had twice visited the north and west of Sutherland, in order to acquaint him- self with the character and relations of the formation in which Mr Peach had been so successful. But though he had examined: with some little care the cherty concretions of the limestone of Durness, he had found no such decided organisms as one at least of the specimens on the table,
24 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society.
The apparent whorls in the rock had attracted his notice ; but the region was one in which mistakes had already been made; Macculloch had re- garded the white cylinders of Stonechrubie as organic; and the late Mr Hay Cunningham had fallen into what was deemed a similar mistake re- specting the supposed tubes of Loch Erribol; and as he could get no such unequivocal organisms as the one on the table, he did not venture to come to any conclusion regarding them. One well-preserved fossil, however, serves to throw light on many obscure ones, and such was the cast spe- cially referred to by Mr Peach, now before the Society. It was evidently that of a whorled shell, though, as its whorls were not on the same plane, neither a Clymenia nor a Goniatite. It was not, improbable, however that the other whorled shells on the table belonged to the former genus— a genus of which no fewer than forty-three species had been found im the old red sandstone of other countries. Mr Miller then went on to show the stratigraphical relations of the Durness limestone. It was overlaid, he stated, by a vast deposit of quartz rock, corresponding apparently to the sandstone of Tarbat Ness and Dunnet Head, and underlaid by a coarse-grained red sandstone, the analogue, it would seem, of the Great Conglomerate ; while the limestone itself appeared to belong to the same geologic horizon as the flagstones of Caithness and Orkney, and the fish- beds of Cromarty and Ross. No very decisive finding, however, could be based on the organisms yet found; and Mr Miller concluded by re- marking, that he trusted Mr Peach would have some farther opportunity furnished him of following up a course of discovery so interesting in itself, and on which he had entered with such decided success.
VIII. Dr Jonn Atex. Suitru exhibited two adult specimens of the Water Rail, Rallus aquaticus, Penn., captured by his friend Dr John Messer, R.N., on board H,M.S. Arrogant in the southern entrance of the British Channel ; one on the 12th October 1853, in lat. 49° 27’ N., long. 8° 3’ W.; the other on the 13th, in lat. 48° 55’ N., long. 5° 22’ W.; facts probably of some interest in favour of at least a partial migration of this bird taking place. A remarkably pale-coloured or nearly white speci- men of the Ring-dove which had just been shot in Fife, was also ex- hibited; and a curious piebald variety of the Mole, recently caught near Cramond.
The Society then adjourned to the fourth Wednesday of November.
PROCEEDINGS
OF THE
ROYAL PHYSICAL SOCIETY.
Wednesday, November 28, 1855. Professor Fiemine in the Chair.
The following Donations to the Lbrary, sent through the Smithsonian Institution, were laid on the table, and the thanks of the Society voted to the donors :—
1. Highth and Ninth Annual Reports of Board of Regents. 2. Cata- logue of Publications of Learned Societies, and Periodicals in the Library of the Smithsonian Institution, Part J., January 1855.—F rom the Smith- sonian Institution. 3. Report of Commissioners of Patents for 1853— Agriculture. 4. Report of Commissioners of Patents for 1854—Arts and Manufactures.—F rom United States Patent Office. 5. Report and Charts of Cruise of U.S. Brig Dolphin, 1854.—From Lieutenant Lee, Naval Observatory, Washington.
I. Professor Fitemrne then delivered the Opening Address as follows : —
GENTLEMEN,—NSix years have elapsed since I had the honour and the pleasure of addressing you from this chair. We were then looking back to the comparatively short period which had elapsed since, on the revival of the Society, we commenced our labours of progress. But although our term of labour had then been short, we had occupied it so successfully that I could, without flattery or reservation, congratulate you on well- executed observations, and express a confident hope that our harvest in future would be still more productive. Every suc- ceeding session has fully realized our expectations ; and the Physical Society, as an association energetically devoted to the study of the departments of science to which we restricted
ourselves, may be viewed as an important fact. VOL. I. D
26 Proceedings of the
It seems to be acknowledged by all who have been engaged in the business of the Society, that its operations have been pro- ductive of two important and beneficial results. In the first place, it has made kindred spirits acquainted with one another, and called ferth a large amount of sympathy and excitement to labour. In the second place, it has imposed an obligation to contribute materials for our meetings. Many of the members have willingly discharged their obligations ; and in the papers which have been read, will be found, in various departments of science, new and important truths, fully qualified to stand comparison with the productions of other Societies with far higher pretensions. The propriety and truthfulness of this statement will become apparent to all who look over the record of our Proceedings, now, by the judiciousness of our Secretary, about to be furnished in a more accessible and useful form than heretofore. Thanks to the prudent management of our Treasurer, our income exceeds our expenditure, and, I may add, our Library is increasing. New members are, from time to time, being added to our list, and we confidently expect new — applications for enrolment from such as are thirsting after knowledge, or have truths tocommunicate. Here I may take the liberty of observing, that perhaps some improvement may be effected in the publication of our contributions, so as to give to our labours a position which they do not occupy,— likewise a more suitable place of meeting should be sought after. Were the leading literary and scientific societies of Edinburgh to unite in an application to Government for the erection or appropriation of a suitable building for their ac- commodation, the prayer of their petition would, in all proba- bility be granted. Already the Architectural Institute of Scotland has begun to move in the matter, and I trust they will receive our cordial co-operation. When referring to other societies, I may here mention that a movement was in progress a year ago to effect a junction of the Wernerian Na- tural History Society, which had become dormant, with our Institution. The late Professor Edward Forbes entered cor- dially into the scheme ; and the amalgamation would probably by this time have taken place, if his life had been spared to science. Should the subject be again considered, and oyver-
Royal Physical Society. 27 tures made to us, I hope I may venture to say that they will be received and considered in a kindly and liberal spirit.
When I last addressed you from this chair, I took occasion to point out the very defective state of our public collections for purposes of study, noticing, in course, the Museum of the University, of the Highland Society, and other corporations. Many members of this Society cordially entered into the views then enunciated, and a resolution was formed to make a vigo- rous effort to have a public collection established worthy of the present state of science and the Scottish metropolis. The re~ marks which I then made, and which were published in a se- parate form, along with a leading article from the pen of the Editor of the Witness, produced a powerful effect on several in- dividuals, and especially the members of the Highland Society, who awoke from their slumbers,and were made to feel ashamed of the indifference to the interests of the public which had been displayed. In the first instance, I enjoyed, of course, my full share of abuse for presuming to hint at imperfections existing. By degrees, however, the sense of the community detected the folly of the “let alone’ opponents of the measure,—“ let well alone” being a phrase which no one dared to employ. For- tunately, at this stage of the process, an agitation took place regarding the Trigonometrical Survey ; and “ Justice to Scot- land” sounded somewhat loudly.
The gratifying intelligence at last reached us that the Board of Trade had resolved to institute an Indusirial Museum for Scotland in Edinburgh. Judging from my limited source of knowledge, I may state, that no one laboured more earnestly in the accomplishment of the object tnan Mr Maxwell, the pre- sent judicious and energetic Secretary of the Highland So- ciety. In the progress of arrangements, it was recommended to the Board and adopted, that the curator should be a chemist. The propriety of this step did not seem to many to be very apparent, especially as the products with which the naturalist is conversant, and the applications of mechanical philosophy, appear as intimately connected with our industrial progress as the science which has been thus favoured. Accordingly, Dr George Wilson was appointed; and no one acquainted with his talents and zeal begrudged him the honours or the emolu-
28 Proceedings of the
ments of office. Grounds have been purchased, plans framed, and everything but the execution seems progressing. Nay, — more, Government, unsolicited, as far as has appeared, by any of the representatives of Scottish Colleges, Scottish industry, or Scottish science, and without a precedent in any of the usually more highly-favoured towns of the empire, gave to Edinburgh a “ Regius Professor of Technology,’ and bestowed the chair on the Curator of the Industrial Museum. Multi- tudes wondered what this title could mean, what subjects would be discussed, what science would be selected for appli- cation, what arts for illustration. The older Professors, it is understood, are still to point out the practical application of those branches which they teach, while the technologist is to limit his enterprise to the uncultivated spots, so that collision may thus be avoided. As intimately connected with the sub- ject we have just been considering, I may mention that the late Professor Forbes had begun to place the Museum of the University in a condition more favourable for study, and was disposed to render the specimens more accessible to the stu- dents of Natural History. His successor has entered upon his duties evidently cherishing the same. high-minded, liberal views. Hence, what we looked forward to, or rather trem- blingly hoped for, six years ago, we are now on the eve of seeing realized. If we had done nothing else in our day than origi- nated and accelerated the movement which has produced the changes above referred to, our existence as a philosophical as- sociation has not been unprofitable.
Several articles have of late appeared in the newspapers, calling the attention of the Edinburgh public to an abuse of a bequest for a scientific purpose, unparalleled perhaps in the history of corporation jobs. It appears that a sum of money, exceeding £1500, was received by the Magistrates of Edin- burgh in 1821, from the funds of the late Dr Thomson of Pa- lermo, for the endowment of a Lectureship for the promotion of Mineralogy in the University. Conditions were prescribed and accepted,—his minerals and cabinets were secured. But to this hour these conditions have been evaded—no lectureship has been instituted,—the funds have been misapplied ; thus leaving the lovers of mineralogy, of which we have several in
Royal Physical Society. 29
our Society, to lament that the confidence of the donor, and the interests of science, have been so egregiously cheated. In the meantime, and. before adopting any measures for the pub- lic benefit in connection with the subject, let us express our earnest hope that the newly-elected magistrates will bestir themselves and wipe off the disgrace.
Suffer me, before retiring, to thank you for the honour you thrust upon me as your President—an office I willingly resign into abler hands, and, wishing you all prosperity, bid you farewell.
On the motion of Dr Grevituz, seconded by Ropert CuampBers, Esq., the thanks of the Society was unanimously given to Professor Fleming for his address.
Il. Notice of the Leaf Insect (Phyllium Scythe), lately bred in the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh, with Remarks on its Metamorphoses and Growth. By Anprew Murray, Esq., W.S., Edinburgh. (Plates ie LFV.)
The Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh has, during the past summer, possessed an attraction which has drawn great numbers of visitors.
A living specimen of one of the species of leaf-insect has, for nearly eighteen months, been an inmate of the hothouses ; and the curiosity of the public to see this interesting animal had latterly become so engrossing, that Mr M‘Nab, the curator of the Gardens, to whose care and judicious management the prolonged life of the insect is entirely due, found it necessary, for the health of the insect itself, to forbid its being shown on more than four days in the week.
For the greatest period of its life, it so exactly resembled the leaf on which it fed, that when visitors were shown it, they usually, after looking carefully over the plant for a minute or two, declared that they could see no insect. It had then to be more minutely pointed out to them; and although seeing is notoriously said to be believing, it looked so absolutely the same as the leaves among which it rested, that this test rarely satisfied them, and nothing would convince them that there was a real live insect there, but the test of touch. It had to be stirred up to make it move, or still more commonly was taken off the plant, and made to crawl on the finger of the at- tendant ; and the excitement of this constant stirring up and
30 Proceedings of the
handling was found to be so much the reverse of beneficial to the animal, that the above restriction on its days of receiving company was found indispensable.
The public owe the gratification of seeing this curious insect in its living state, to the amiable and accomplished wife of Major Blackwood, of the H.E.1.C.S8., a name better known in Edinburgh in connection with “. Maga.”
It was she who, having been struck and delighted with what she saw of its economy in its native country, made successive attempts to introduce it alive into Britain, the third of which attempts was finally successful, in the case of the subject of the present memoir, a memoir which it has been thought might be interesting, as these insects have not only never before been seen alive in this country, but have never been bred, nor had their transformations watched by any naturalist.
The venus has been long known through a species named by Latreille and succeeding naturalists, Phyllium siccifolium ; but the species properly entitled to this name, is still uncer- tain, it having been at first supposed, that there was only one species, and every specimen of a Phylliwm having been re- ferred to it. This confusion has been somewhat cleared up by Mr George R. Gray, who, availing himself of the rich collection in the British Museum, published a Monograph of the genus, in. the first volume of the Loologist, in which he described thirteen species, nine of which were new. The genus seems peculiar to the Hastern world; three of the thirteen having come from the Philippine Islands, three from the East Indies and Ceylon, one from Java, one from Mauritius, and one from the Seychelle Islands. The locality of the remaining four species, (among which is the old Ph. siccifolium) is unknown. The species with which we have to do, was described by Gray, under the name of Ph. Scythe, but without giving a figure of it, a want which we have endeavoured to supply. It comes from Silhet, and the mountainous district of India adjoining Assam. Speci- mens of the female not unfrequently occur in the cases of in- sects sent from thence, but the male comes much more rarely.
Mrs Blackwood found both males and females, as well as the young insect in all stages, plentiful in the valleys below Cherra- poonjie in the Kasiah Hills, which form part of the southern
Royal Physical Society. 31
boundary of the valley of Assam. A guava tree grew in the garden in front of her house, and on this she placed such speci- mens as she could secure,and when once placed on the tree they did not in general seek to leave it, at least until they assumed the perfect state, a convenient habit of which Mr M‘Nab found the advantage in rearing his specimen. On returning to this country Mrs Blackwood endeavoured to bring some living speci- mens with her, but having found the trouble and attention they required too great, she, after bringing them safely to Calcutta, entrusted them to a friend, who shortly followed and brought them in good condition overland till they reached the Medi- terranean Sea, when they died,—even that genial climate ap- parently not having suited them.
Mrs Blackwood next tried to introduce them by eggs. She got a parcel of eggs transmitted to her by post, but as they had not come out at the period she expected, she left them behind on going out of town (despaired of asregards hatching, but preserved as specimens), when to her mingled pleasure and regret on her return, she found that many of them had come out and died in the box in which she left them. Encouraged by this result, she again got a supply of eggs in the spring of 1854, and keeping a more careful watch upon them, she had the pleasure to find a pair come out on the 9th and 10th May: one or two followed every week till the end of May, when a week or so of cold weather » occurred, during which no more came out; but when fine wea- ther again returned in the beginning of June, they again began to come out in greater numbers. It was one or two of these which were entrusted to Mr M‘Nab, and he succeeded in rear- ing to perfection the specimen which became such a favourite. He carefully noted down the periods of change in the insect, and such other circumstances regarding its habits as struck him, and he has been kind enough to furnish me with a note of these which I have embodied in the following paper.
On the young insects being hatched considerable difficulty was felt about their food. Of course the first thing thought of was the guava, and leaves of it as well as of various other allied Myrtacez were tendered them, but whether it was that the leaves having been plucked, and not growing on their stalk, did not suit them, or that some little time after their eclo-
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sure must elapse before they begin to feed, they would not settle to any of the delicacies that had been provided for them, and fears about their starving began to intrude themselves.
The first plant tried was a Fuchsia, but it was afterwards abandoned for the common myrtle, and this seemed to suit them well. Mr M‘Nab’s specimen never sought to leave the plant on which it was placed till it was full grown and fur- nished with wings, when it was found necessary to put a mus- lin bell-shaped cover over the plant, to prevent the insect flying away.
The temperature of the house in which it was kept was as nearly 55° as could be maintained.
Ihave been thus particular in mentioning the details of their introduction, in order to aid, by our past experience, others who may in like manner attempt to breed them, because, from the interest which the present specimen excited, it is highly probable that such attempts will be made ; and I should not be at all surprised if, in the course of a few years, the leaf insect should be as common an inmate of our conservatories, as the canary bird now is of our dwellings.
Having said this much as to their introduction, let us now turn to the insect itself, and take some note of its personal appearance and economy. We shall begin with the egg.
The egg is about the size of asmall pea, barrel-shaped, and with six longitudinal ribs; it looks uncommonly like some seeds. As Mr M‘Nab remarks, if the edges of the seed of the Mara- bilis Jalapa were rubbed off, the seed might be mistaken for the egg. The ribs are all placed at equal distances except two which are wider apart, and the space between them flatter, so that on the egg falling it rolls over till it comes to this flatter side and there lies. The outsideis rough and corrugated like the bark of a tree, and is penetrated by rows of largish longitudinal holes on each side of the ribs, and by rows of smaller holes between them. At the top there is a little conical lid fitting very tightly to the mouth. On the outside the lid is composed of the same bark-like structure as the outside of the body of the egg, and has its base surrounded by frill-like projections, which at first sight one might take for an apparatus for holding on the lid, but closer inspection shows
A ae ae »
Royal Physical Society. 33
they belong to the lid itself. On removing the lid we see a beautiful porcelain chamber of a pale French white colour, bear- ing a close resemblance to the texture of a hen’s egg, but itis not calcareous, and has more the appearance of enamel. On holding this shell between us and the light, we see light spaces where the holes in the cortical outer covering terminate, and in the centre of each there is a darker space, as if 1t were a pore ; but this conjecture I have not been able to verify. The sub- stance composing the outer cortical covering is very curious. It is very thick. Looked at with the naked eye it seems of a spongy, reticulated, fibrous structure. But under the micro- scope we see that it is composed of cells, generally arranged in rows radiating outwards; some irregularly shaped, but most of them with a greater or less tendency to a pentagonal or hexagonal shape. In fact, in some parts both the substance and structure bear a most striking resemblance to a piece of honeycomb.
It seems not difficult to conjecture the purpose which the cellular texture of this outer covering serves. If it had been of a firm close substance. the embryo insect could not have re- ceived the amount of air and moisture necessary for its exis- tence, and which, from what I shall presently detail, are more than usually necessary in this family of insects.
Having received from Mrs Blackwood one or two unhatched eggs, and the shells of others which had been hatched, I was enabled to make an examination of the interior. On breaking into the egg which had been hatched I found two pellucid mem- branes, one within the other, the outer one doubtless cor- responding to the chorion. On breaking open an addle egg, I found first a pellucid membrane (the chorion), and within it a clear carmine-coloured capsule, flask-shaped at bottom, but flat at the top.
This capsule might at first be taken for the dried-up yolk of the egg; but if our readers will give me their for- bearance, I trust to satisfy them that it is something very different. In order to do so, I must take them a little way back into the elements of entomology. They are doubtless aware that the Orthoptera (to which order of insects the Phyllium
belongs) are characterized by what is called a semi-complete VOL. I. E
34 Proceedings of the
metamorphosis, that is, that they quit the egg, not in the shape of caterpillars, but as six-legged insects, nearly similar in form to the perfect insect, but without wings, and, as will be afterwards shown, with some other parts only partially developed ; that after so appearing they at no time go into a dormant chrysalid state, but, after casting their skin a cer- tain number of times, the wings and other perfect forms of the parts of the insect make their appearance. The first stage of these insects after their appearance out of the egg has been treated by entomologists as a peculiar form of the larva state, which Westwood has characterized as “ homomorphous,” or ““monomorphous,” from its resemblance to the perfect insect after its first moultings; and when the wings begin to appear it was said to pass into the pupa state, and was called an active nymph, or pupa. Professor Owen, however, has pointed out that we ought not to look upon these “ homomorphous” larvee as true larve, but that the true larval condition is to be sought for in the egg. He states that “these insects” (the orthop- terous and hemipterous) “are at one stage of their develop- ment apodal and acephalous larve, like the maggot of the fly; but instead of quitting the egg in this stage, they are quickly transformed into another, in which the head and rudimental thoracic feet are developed to the degree which characterizes the hexapod larve of the Carabi and Petalocera ; the thorax is next defined, and the parts or appendages of the head are formed, at which stage of development the young orthopteran corresponds with the hexapod antenniferous larva of the Meloe; but it differs from all coleopterous larve in being inactive, and continuing in the egg almost until all the pro- portions and characters of the mature insect are acquired, save the wings.’’*
This philosophic view was, I believe, first enunciated by Owen. At any rate it has received his approval, and, I may add, the sanction derived from his personal observation ; for in an after-passage on the same subject, and. which I have pleasure in quoting for more reasons than one, he says, ‘‘ Metro- politan duties shut out much of the field of nature; but still she may be found and studied everywhere. I first learned to
* Lectures on Invertebrate Animals, Hd. 1850, p. 424.
Royal Physical Society. 35
appreciate the true nature and relations of the nominally various and distinct metamorphoses of insects, by watching and pondering over the development of a cockroach (also an orthopterous insect), which quits the egg as a crustacean. I saw that it passed through stages answering to those at which other insects were arrested: there was a period when its jointed lees were simple, short, unarticulated buds,—when its thirteen segments were distinct and equal,—when it was apo- dal,—when it was acephalous.’* This statement, I think, not only entitles, but obliges us to hold, that it has been deter- mined by observation that the larva of orthopterous insects has been detected in the shape of a maggot passing the early portion of its life in the egg.t
Having arrived thus far, 1 was surprised to find Professor Owen stopping here. Ithought the necessary consequence of as- suming that the early stage of the orthopteran was a caterpillar in the egg, was, that it also passed the chrysalid state in the ego. Icould quite understand the perfect jointed insect being eliminated at once out of the embryonic elements in the egg, in the same way that a chicken is hatched; but if the maggot is once hatched instead of the chicken, I know of no means, or no analogy, by which its vermiform character can be
* Lectures on Invertebrate Animals, Ed. 1855, p. 437.
t Iam inclined to think that all insects pass a more or less considerable portion of their larval state in the egg. Except on this assumption, I am at a loss to account for the well-known fact of the exclusion of ichneumon flies from the eggs of various insects, for I find difficulty in accepting the proposition that these parasitic larve feed on the yolk of theegg. The whole economy of the ich- neumon seems to me opposed to this. All those which we can watch require a living animated organism on which to feed ; and although the yolk might, for a short period, retain its vital powers even after it has begun to be preyed upon by the ichneumon, I apprehend such a period could only be brief. The yolk would soon have its vitality destroyed by the intrusion of the parasite, which would perish along with the decaying mass which its presence had cor- rupted. It seems more consistent with their habits and economy, to suppose that those minute parasites feed upon the larva already formed in the egg, or, at the utmost, that they commence their ravages after the development of the yolk into the larva has commenced, and reach their chrysalid state as the yolk by its dying effort completes the larva, in the same way as the larger ichneu- mons devour the excluded larve, mining away their powers till they leave them only strength to pass into the chrysalid state simultaneously with them- selves.
36 Proceedings of the
changed, except by passing through the dormant chrysalid state. To make this plainer to non-entomological readers, I should observe, that the process by which the caterpillar, in passing through the chrysalid state, is changed into the per- fect insect, is not, as Kirby and Spence supposed, by all the _ subsequent forms being originally included under the skin of the larva, and that every successive operation was merely casting off an old coat, to appear, like the riders in a circus, in another one under it; but the process, as shown by the accurate observations of Herold on the changes and develop- ment of the organs during the pupa state, is, “like the ori- ginal processes of the development of the larva itself, the results of a transmutation, increase, and coalescence of primitive elements of the different tissues,—elements which consist of nucleated cells or nuclei, like those that result from the spon- taneous fissions of the primary impregnated germ-cell,—ele- ments which may be viewed as parts of the original germ-mass, retained to be successively metamorphosed into the successive larval skins, pupa skins, and 1mago.’’*
To give a more familiar illustration of this transmutation, d&c., | may adduce an experiment familiar to most entomolo- gists. Take a newly-formed chrysalis, break it in two, and we find the muscular fibre, &c., not much changed from that of the larva. Take it.somewhat older, and break it, we find it full of a liquid like milk. The old fibre has been disintegrated before it can be made into the new form. Break achrysalis at a more advanced period, and we find no longer this milky sub- - stance, but the form, figure, and organs of the perfect insect already stamped, and ready to appear at the proper season. It is like a paper manufactory,—the new paper cannot be made until the old rags are reduced into a pulp.
‘This transformation through the chrysalis, then, being the sole analogy which we have to argue from, I cannot conceive how we can evade the necessity of the egg-larva of the orthop- teran also passing through a dormant chrysalid state, in which the disintegration and transmutation of the larva may take place. But if the jointed-legged insect be the pupa or
x Owen’s Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy of Invertebrate Animals, p. 434, Edition 1855. 2
Royal Physical Society. o7
chrysalis, we have no such period during which the dissolution and transmutation of the insect may take place. It cannot have its fibres and muscles dissolved into a homogeneous mass while it is actively walking about, as if nothing was the matter with its muscles; and we must have recourse to some new ma- chinery not yet known in insect life, to account for such a state of things. Such being the case, I expected that Pro- fessor Owen would have taken the view, that the chrysalid state, as well as the larval state, was passed in the egg; but he does not do so. The nearest approach he makes to it is when he says, “ The metamorphoses which the locust undergoes in its progress from the potential germ_to the actual winged and procreative imago, are nevertheless as numerous and ex- treme as those of the butterfly. The differences are relative, not essential; they relate to the place in, and the time during which the metamorphoses occur, and to the powers associated with particular transitory forms of the insect. The legs of the worm-like embryo-locust were once unarticulated buds, like the prolegs of the caterpillar ; but the creature was passive, and development was not superseded for a moment by mere growth; these organizing processes go on simultaneously ; or rather change of form is more conspicuous than increase of bulk. The six rudimental feet are put to no use, but constitute mere stages in the rapid formation of the normal segments, which attain their mature proportions, and their armature of claws and spines, before the egg is left. The first segment of the original apodal and acephalous larva, is as rapidly and un- interruptedly metamorphosed into the mandibulate and anten- nate head, with large compound eyes.”’*
Now, although it is impossible to doubt, that the idea of the larva changing into a chrysalis in the egg, and there complet- ing its transformation, must have crossed the mind of Professor Owen,—still, whether it be from thinking that his own obser- vations did not justify him in promulgating such an opinion, or from whatever other cause, it appears clear that the above- quoted passage does not announce such a doctrine, and indeed the latter part would seem to contradict it, and to lead to the in- ference, that he considered the six-legged insect which emerges
* Owen’s Comp. Anat., p. 436.
38 | Proceedings of the
from the egg, to be “ uninteruptedly metamorphosed” from the larva in the egg; and other passages and expressions, when speaking of the emerged insect before 1t acquires wings, show sufficiently that he looks upon that state as the pupa or nymph state. For instance, he says, “ The active pupa of Orthoptera and Hemiptera are called ‘nymphs’”” Again, speaking of the moulting of these so-called pupa or nymphs, he says: “ When this active pupa or nymph again moults, the insect attains its perfect condition.’? And afterwards he adds: “‘ Here then we see that the pupa stage, which in the butterfly was passive and embryonic, in the locust, is active and vora- cious ; whilst their respective conditions in the larval state are reversed. The whole period of the life of the Orthopterous insect,’ he goes on, “ from exclusion to flight, may, if its orga- nization during that period be contrasted with that of the Le- pidopterous or Coleopterous insects, be called an active nymph- hood.”*
The extracts which I have given on the authority of Profes- sor Owen, are quoted from the last edition of his Lectures on the Comparative Anatomy of Invertebrate Animals, published in May 1855; and I am taking it for granted, that we may assume them to contain the latest recognised views of physio- logists on the subject. We see, then, that the present opinion is, that the orthopterans pass the larval phase of their exist- ence in the egg,—that they pass their pupa state in an active six-legeed, but unwinged form, after coming out of the egg,— and that the perfect insect is only seen when the wings are developed.
Now, the proposition which I venture to submit after care- ful consideration of what I have observed of this leaf-insect, is, that both the larval and chrysalid states are passed in the egg, and that what has been called the homomorphous larva or the active pupa, is merely a phase of the perfect in- sect. The analogy on which I have just remarked speaks strongly in behalf of this view. The examination of the capsule found in the egg confirms it. This capsule has a distinct determinate form. It is covered with a pellucid membrane of its own, as can be seen in another specimen where
* Owen’s Comp. Anat., p. 436.
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hoy ae Lhyseoat Sacuely Ldinhurgl
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G3 Fig 4 Do Magnificd D 0. Magnrfie d.
Fig. F Nac Sve.
YOUNG GCN a EMERGING FROM £EG ig. 6.
Do. Magn “ofted 2°
ANT. OF MALE AT FIRST MOULT &
ANT. OF MALE
MALE AN FEM an ® AT LAST MOULT
Fig.l Fig. 8. Fg. 9 Lig. 10. Magnified F Ee : PHYLLIUM SOY. 0HE.
(DETAILS)
A.PERRICGAL DEL PRINTED IN COLOURS BY WH.LIZARS FOIE
Royal Physical Society. 39
the insect has passed out of the capsule and out of the egg, and where both the outer chorion and the skin of the capsule may be seen one within the other. These circumstances i1m- ply that the capsule is not a yolk; because if it had been a yolk surrounded by albumen within the chorion which had dried up, it would not have preserved a determinate form, and it would not have had a membrane round the capsule (quasi- yolk). A yolk has not a membrane round it like the chorion round the albumen; and the yolk or interior of the egg in drying up does not assume a determinate form. Farther, in the eggs of insects which emerge from the egg in the larva state, there is only found one membrane (the chorion), the same as ina hen’s egg. I refer to a specimen of the egg of one of the largest coleopterous insects known (the longicorn, Titanus giganteus), where it will be seen that there is only a single membrane or chorion surrounding a dried amorphous mass. This capsule, then, not being the yolk or original contents of the egg, we are driven to look for some other explanation of its form and appearance; and these considerations tend- ing to confirm the view suggested by the analogies of the sub- ject, I do not hesitate to submit as an explanation, that the capsule in question is the chrysalis of the leaf-insect, and that. the same physiological arrangement will be found in all or- thopterous and hemipterous insects.
It cannot be urged as an argument against this view, that what I consider the perfect insect changes its skin a certain number of times. The larva changes its skm; and nobody thinks that on that account it has ceased to be a larva. The perfect crab changesits skin; and we still look upon it as per- fect as before. That specialty, therefore, has no relevance. A more embarrassing fact is, that after emerging from the egg, changes take place on the form of the insect, and impor- tant organs are altered or appear. As I shall presently men- tion, an important alteration takes place inthe antenne; and large wings, which are wanting on the first appearance of the insect out of the egg, finally emerge. But it is to be ob- served that all these changes take place in the way of gradual growth, something like the appearance of teeth in the mam- mal. The wings begin to bud out of the back after the first
40 Proceedings of the
change of skin; they are small short wings after the second change, and expand into their full size after the third and last. In the same way the alteration in the proportions and in the antenne are gradual and progressive, and may be traced as the animal moults. Another circumstance which I must not overlook, although at first sight it seems to make against me, is, that in the young insect (that is, the insect ex- cluded from the egg but not yet furnished with wings), the male and female sexual organs are not developed, or at least not fully developed ; while in insects passing through what is called a perfect metamorphosis, they are as fully developed on emerg- ing from the chrysalis as ever they are. But I would only class this with the other instances of growth, and rather use the analogy of the changes in our own species on attaining to~ puberty, to show thatit is not an essential ingredient in meta- morphic changes. Such changes are obviously not only of much less importance, but also of a totally different class of physiological development, than the change effected in the dormant chrysalis, and, it appears to me, are to be looked at as instances of growth in the perfect insect, not as a mode of me- _ tamorphosis at all. |
In leaving this part of the subject, I have only farther to say, that I am quite alive to the meagreness of the obser- vations on which I have ventured to build this hypothesis, and that my premises might have been more extended. Had IT had more eggs, and had the opportunity of opening them at different periods, my premises would have been more extend- ed. But as long as there was the chance of a leaf-insect being hatched from the eggs, they were too valuable to be broken. I have only examined one addle egg, and it chanced to be one with what I suppose to be the chrysalis in it. Some more fortunate individual will, I hope, ere long have the opportunity of settling the question; and if, on opening eggs at an early period, he find a maggot, and at later periods this capsule, I think I shall then be entitled to say that 1t has been settled in my favour.
But to proceed with the history of the insect. After hay- ing reached the form of a six-legged jointed insect, it emerges from the egg by pushing off the lid. It comes out middle
Royal Physical Society. 4]
foremost, that is, its head and tail are packed downwards, so as to meet each other; the back between them first appears, and they are drawn out next; the legs are extricated last. The colour of the insect at this stage is a reddish-yellow, some- thing of the hue of a half-dried beech leaf; for it is to be ob- served, that although the colour of the insect varies at different periods of its life, it always more or less resembles a leaf in some stages. When it has once settled to eat the leaves on which it is placed, the body speedily becomes bright green. Among the leaves of the common myrtle it cannot be distin- guished by the colour of the body (the legs are browner); and its habit of carrying itself tends to add to the deception. It bears its tail generally curled up a little, just about as much bent as the myrtle leaf. As it bends its tail up, however, the curl would be the wrong way, unless the insect walked back downmost, which, in point of fact, is its constant habit, ad- hering to the under side of the leaves. This habit brings to light another beautiful contrivance for still farther heightening its resemblance to a leaf. The upper surface is opaque green, the under surface glossy, glittering green, just the reverse of the myrtle or guava leaf; so that, by reversing its position, it brings the glossy side up and the dull side down.* It is pro- vided with tarsi to suit this upside-down mode of life. Be- tween each of the claws there is a large spongy pad, which, as with flies walking on the ceiling, enables it to adhere firmly to the leaf; indeed it was always difficult to disengage its hold of anything it stuck to.
There are several differences between the form of the insect at this stage and as it finally appears. It has no wings now. The antenne, whether the animal subsequently turn out to be male or female, have at present the form of the antenne of the perfect female. On the other hand, the legs have the male form. The flat leaf-like appendages to the legs of the female are much broader and more expanded than thoseof the male; and as every _ example of the freshly-eclosed insect which Ihave seen has these appendages shaped like those of the male (while at the same
* This peculiarity is much more distinctly seen in the young state and living
insect, than in the dried specimens. VOL. J. FP
42 Proceedings of the
time the antenne bear the female stamp), I assume that this is the normal character at this period. The form of the segments of the abdomen are somewhat different. They taper to the tail from the third segment, instead of running parallel to each other, or nearly so, throughout the fourth, fifth, and sixth seg- ments. There exist the same number of segments in the ab- domen, and also of parts in the thorax; but when the wings afterwards appear, there is, of course, some difference. In some specimens I think I can see a swelling where the joint of the wing is to emerge; and there is a pinching up of the skin where the scutellum afterwards appears, for it is wanting in the young insect, though present in the full-grown one. As already mentioned, the sexual organs are not developed in the young specimen. :
The leaf-insect is subject to three moults, as 1s generally the case with the Orthoptera. The insect reared by Mr M‘Nab was hatched in the beginning of June 1854. Its first moult took place about ten months afterwards, viz., on 10th April 1855. During that time it had increased very gradually but not greatly in size. It was not an inch in length when hatched, and at its first moult it measured not much more than an inch. On this moult taking place, the change in its form and propor- tions was very trifling. The abdomen became relatively broader, and the swelling at the part where the wings afterwards burst out more decided. The most interesting change, however, was observed on the antenne; and, as the circumstance has not hitherto been noticed, it is worthy of attention. A reference to the figure of the female antenne will show that they are short and thick (scarcely one-eighth of an inch in length), and composed of nine joints, the third of which is considerably thicker, longer, and more bulky than the rest. On the other hand, the antenne of the male are long and thin, about one and a quarter inch in length, and composed of twenty-four joints, and the third joint at the base is not thicker or larger than the rest; on the contrary, the joints get shorter and shorter as they approach the base, and the basal thirteen are de- cidedly smaller, and of a different form from the apical eleven. But the antenne of all the young freshly-eclosed insects
Royal Physical Scciety. 43
(whether male or female) are short like the female, and con- sist only of nine joints. They are perfect miniature repre- sentations of the full-grown female antenne. After the first moult, however, a change was perceptible on the antenne of the specimen bred; and that change can still be distinctly seen in the cast skin, which has been kept. The third joint has grown longer. No trace of division can yet be seen in it, but if we had the next skin (which we unfortunately want), I feel certain we should find traces of divisions in the joints. We have, however, the third and last skin which was moulted, and we see in it thata great change has taken place. ‘The an- tennee still bear the general short, thick, female form. They are only a little longer; but on counting the joints, we find that there are now eleven joints beyond the third, where before there were only six, as if each had been split in two except the terminal joint, and we find the third joint to contain within itself eleven more new ones. It has become elongated, and a series of striz (they can scarcely yet be called joints) run across it, well defined on the interior side, but not so well de- fined on the exterior margin. These with the two basal joints, on which no change has taken place, make up the twenty-four jomts of the male antennz ; and on the insect emerging from the last skin, they rapidly extend themselves to the full-grown size. I may observe, that the multiplication of parts by sub- division (although a mode often adopted by nature in other classes of living animals) is not the usual course followed in the case of insects; for instance, the Lulus terrestris (which may be taken as a type of the Myriapods) has, when it emerges from the egg, only eight segments. ‘These are mul- tiplied by the growth of new segments—six at a time; but the new segments are not formed by a division of the old, but by generation from the penultimate segment at the terminal space. The interesting skins preserved, in this instance, leave no doubt as to the means by which the segments of the an- tennze have been increased.
As I have already mentioned, however, we have not the se- cond skin; the insect ate it up before it could be secured. I[ am not aware whether this singular act of cannibalism has
d4 Proceedings of the
been observed in other insects after moulting. But Mr Tho- mas Bell, in his History of British Reptiles, records a similar instance in the toad. After describing the process of divest- ing itself of its skin, which he had watched in the common toad, he says,—‘ The whole cuticle was thus detached, and was now pushed by the two hands into the mouth in a little ball, and swallowed at a single gulp.” But although it would seem to indicate a very morbid appetite in the toad, this piece of epicureanism does not strike us as so extraordinary in it, as it does in the leaf-insect. The toad lives on animal food; but this insect whose food is exclusively vegetable, has surely made a curious deviation from its instincts, unless we are to hold that the leaf-insect not only looks like a leaf, but also tastes like a leaf. |
The second ecdysis or moult took place on the 16th of July, at 8 A.M.; indeed they all took place about that time of the day,—the first having been at 10 a.M., the second at 8 A.M., and the third at 9 am. After the second, the tegmina and wings made their appearance, but of small size. The third moult was on the 17th September, when the full-grown wings and antennze were produced. ‘The day previous to the casting of the skin, the insect was observed to be unusually lively, shaking and working about with its body, while the feet- seemed firmly attached to the leaf. Before the moultings the insect became of a grayish tinge, doubtless caused by the skin having become loose, through the shaking process al- luded to.
Its rapid increase in size after emerging from the old skin is most remarkable. An accurate observer in the Hast writ- ing to Mrs Blackwood of the moulting of the locust, gives so graphic an account of it, and one so exactly describing the process that took place in our leaf-insect, that I cannot refrain from quoting it. He says—‘‘ The most extraordinary cireum- stance attending the process is the rapid or almost imstanta- neous growth of the animal as he emerges from his old cover- ing, each limb on being freed being about a fourth longer and larger than the corresponding part of the case from which it. has just been withdrawn. The wings you can see shoot out
PLATE I.
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FAINTED IN COLOUAS BY W.H.LIZARS EDINZ
Royal Physical Society. | 45
to their full length; they also come out of little cases of about a quarter of an inch long, and in the course of a few minutes attain their full growth of about two and a half inches long. The whole process does not take more than ten minutes. The animal now in its perfect form is at first very soft and tender, but in the course of half an hour’s exposure to the atmosphere, he hardens and becomes strong and ready for flight.” One would say that this description had been written for the leaf- insect,—so exactly does it represent the process in it.
_ After each of the first two moultings, the insect assumed a beautiful emerald-green colour; while after the last moult, the body had a slight tinge of yellow roundit. It subsequently gradually became yellower and brownish at the edge, passing through the different hues of a decaying leaf. Like the leaf it resembles and feeds upon, it seemed to decay on arriving at ma- turity ; and it is to be observed that its sere and yellow leaf also occurred at the period of the year when the foliage assumes its autumnal tint, viz., in the end of September and beginning of October. How far the causes which bring about this result resemble each other in plants and animals, will be an interest- ing subject of inquiry to the physiologist, when we have a better supply of the insect to experiment upon.
Ill. On a Remarkable Pouched Condition of the Glandule Peyeriane of the Giraffe. By T. Spencer Copzoitp, M.D., Assistant Conservator of the Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh. (Plate V.)
Among the various. modes of extension of the intestinal mucous element in vertebrate animals, we have several in- stances where the general absorbing surface is increased by the development of sacculi or pouches; but, so far as we are aware, no example has hitherto been placed on record of a similar kind of membranous reduplication specially involving Peyer’s patches.
At a meeting of the Physical Society, held April 5, 1854, we offered a somewhat detailed account of the anatomical and pa- thological data furnished by the post-mortem examination of a Giraffe, and the facts then enunciated (except as regards the
46 - Proceedings of the
morbid changes) served merely to confirm a few of the nume- rous particulars which had been previously described in the admirable monographs of Professor Owen.*
After the lapse of more than a twelvemonth, we had occasion to overhaul the parts laid aside for future conservation and permanent display in the anatomical museum, and on care- fully re-examining these, we detected at the root of the czecum, and in portions of the small intestine, the peculiarities to be immediately noticed. The circumstance of their having hitherto escaped. observation is easily accounted for, inasmuch as the sacculi, in the present case, were only rendered visible by repeated washings, and the removal of a thick layer of tenacious mucus which completely obliterated all trace of the foldings. During our temporary absence from the meeting of the British Association recently held at Glasgow, the prepara- tions now before the Society were exhibited by Professor Allen Thomson to the Physiological Sub-section of that assembly, and since then we have had an opportunity of privately calling the attention of Professor Kolliker of Wurtzburg to the sub- ject ; we feel confidence in stating, therefore, that the occur- rence of the sacculi in question is certainly quite unusual, if not altogether absent in other mammalia.
In the first place, we observe that only a proportion of the composite glands proper to the small intestine presented any deviation from the ordinary type, and in consequence of our having retained only a few small sections of the tube detached indiscriminately from different parts of the gut, we were un- able to form even an approximate notion as to the actual num- ber of patches showing the following modification. Out of the eight or nine glandule examined by us, four of the masses, varying severally from half an inch to three inches in length, exhibited at their anterior or duodenal extremity a semilunar valve-like fold of mucous membrane. Hach fold forms a sort of cul-de-sac, which in the two larger patches is capable of admitting the tip of the little finger; the exposed or convex surface exhibits the ordinary villous texture of the intestine,
* On the Anatomy of the Nubian Giraffe, in Zool. Soc. Trans., vol, ii.; also a second Memoir in vol. iii., for 1838-1839.
Royal Physical Society. 47
while the concave or inner aspect of the valve is, on the con- trary, follicular.
It is to the last Peyerian patch that we wish to direct espe- cial attention ; for here we have developed an extremely com- plicated structure, consisting of from fifteen to twenty pouches, the whole forming a network of cells, and reminding us to a certain extent, of the water cavities of the reticulum. This large compound gland stretches itself continuously from a point anterior to the extremity of the smali intestine, to rather more than two inches beyond the ileo-colic valve ; and it is from the latter division of the patch that the anomaly (which is repre- sented in the accompanying plate) proceeds. Seven of the pouches are complete, and bounded by extremely attenuated lamellee projecting from two to four lines beyond the surface ; they are more or less polygonal, the openings of the first five being large (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and nearly as broad as the calibre of the cavities internally; the other two (6 and7) have contracted oval orifices, measuring only about half the width of the pouches, within. From the right wall of the cavity, marked No. 1, part of the tissues were removed, and subjected to microscopic examination, when the glandular substance showed appear- ances such as are ordinarily recognised in the agminated fol- licles, while beneath the submucous tissue muscular fibres were found, of the non-voluntary kind. Some of the cavities contain secondary sacculi, but these are generally small, and separated by very slightly developed septa ; at the upper part of the sacculus, figured No. 5,is seen one of the secondary pouches of a triangular form, and well defined. The eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh spaces are represented by mere de- pressions bounded by rudimentary partitions scarcely raised from the surface; the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth are more decidedly saccular, especially the first-named, which is elongated, and shows traces of subdivision. Thus far all the folds are lined within and without by follicles characteristic of the compound intestinal glands ; the latter structures are fully developed at every part, but acquire greater conspicuity as they ascend the colon, in which situation they are less closely packed together, and of larger dimensions. Finally, it only
48 Proceedings of the
remains for us to refer to six additional sacculi, which are more or less incomplete, and present scarcely any trace of the follicular element; two of them (15 and 16) are shallow, two rather deep (17 and 18), and two (19 and 20) comparatively’ insignificant.
IV. Notice of the Occurrence of Meteoric Lead in Meteoric Iron from Tarapaca, Chili... (Specimen exhibited.) By-M. Forster Hepp, M.D.
A description’ of this iron, with analyses and a notice of the occurrence of Lead in its cavities, having been inserted in the July Number of the Philosophical Journal, I have, on the present occasion, little left me ex- cept to exhibit the specimen.
Mr Greg having observed globules of a pluish metal filling up small nests in the iron, sent them to me for examination; and it was a singu- larly interesting ‘circumstance that Professor Shepherd, of America, who has devoted so much attention to meteoric bodies, was inspecting my col- lection when the chips of metal reached me, and witnessed the prelimi- nary investigation which introduced lead as one of the elements of those mysterious bodies which visit us from parts unknown.
By as careful and complete an analysis as the small quantity of metal at my disposal enabled me to institute, I was able to detect no substance in these chips but metallic lead. When these portions of the globules which had been in contact with the iron were examined, small quantities of iron and alumina, with traces of magnesia and phosphorus were like- wise found.
Two supposed new mineral substances which occur in this iron are in my hands for examination; the analyses of these when completed I will lay before the Society.
Slices of the iron which contains this meteoric lead have the high value which is always attached to unique specimens; and it is satisfactory to know that, through the generosity of Mr Greg, one of the slices is now in the College Museum.
Alexander M. Edwards, Esq., 33 Northumberland Street; Robert Chambers jun., Esq., 1 Doune Terrace; and James Hector, Esq., 57 Inverleith Row, were balloted for, and elected members of the Society. |
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Royal Physical Society. 49
Wednesday, December 26. Rozert Kaye Grevitte, Esq., LL.D.,
in the Chair.
The Donations to the Library were laid on the table, and the thanks of the Society voted to the donors. These included :—1. Footmarks in the Red Sandstone of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, by Isaac Lea. 2. Ona Fossil Saurian of the New Red Sandstone Formation of Pennsylvania, with some account of that Formation. Also, On some New Fossil Molluscs in the Carboniferous Slates of the Anthracite Seams of the Wilkesbarre Coal
Formation, 1852, by Isaac Lea. 3. Notice of the Oolitic Formation in America, with Descriptions of some of its Organic Remains, by Isaac Lea. 4. Descriptions of Nineteen New Specimens of Colimacea, by I. Lea. 5, Description of a New Species of the Genus Unio, by I. Lea. 6. A Synopsis of the Family of Nazades, by Isaac Lea. 7%. Rectification of Mr T. A. Conrad’s “ Synopsis of the Family of Naiades of North Ame- rica,’ by Isaac Lea. 8. Meteorological Observations, Napa-Keang (Loo-Choo). 1848-49, made by Dr Bettelheim. 9. Catalogue of the Ter- tiary Testacea of the United States, by Henry C. Lea.
From Isaac Lea,Esq., sent through the Smithsonian Institution, U.S.A.
The following Communications were read ;-—
1. Notices of the Saury Pike (Scomberesox Sauris, Penn.), taken in the Firth of Forth. (Specimens were exhibited.)
Mr R. F. Logan referred to the immense influx of the Saury Pike, Scomberesox Saris, which visited the Firth of Forth in the beginning of November. Many appeared about Musselburgh, and were carried by the fishwives in their creels into Edinburgh. For a considerable time, however, he found it impossible to obtain a perfect specimen at Dudding- ston, as they had most ingeniously cut off their long snouts with the view of deluding purchasers into the belief that they were young mackerel. One, however, more honest than the rest, brought them aw naturelle. It seems an excessively delicate and easily-injured fish. He did not see one with the scales on; and all that were thrown up along the shore near Leith appeared more or less mutilated. With regard to its food, he had not been able to find any direct statement in our Ichthyological authors, but suspected it must consist of delicate marine Annelides, possibly of the genus Nereis and its allies, which the fish snaps across the body with its long beak, and swallows at its leisure. This, however, was mere con- jecture, which he had not at present the means of verifying, but received some slight confirmation from a statement made by the most honest of the above-mentioned fishwomen,—viz., that the fish were captured at Mussel-. burgh and Fisherrow, by men and boys in the shallows with unbaited hooks. Now, unless they took them for some kind of annulose animal, it was difficult to understand why they should swallow hooks without a bait. The earliest notice of its occurrence in Scotland seemed to be that
VOL. I. G
50 Proceedings of the
of Pennant, who mentions that great numbers of these fish were thrown ashore at Leith after a storm in November 1768 - and the Rey. Mr Low, in his ‘“‘ Natural History of Orkney,” says, that in 1774, such a glut of them set into Kerston Bay that they could be taken by pailfuls, and heaps were flung ashore.
Dr J. A. Smith read an extract from the Alloa Advertiser, showing the extraordinary abundance of these fish ;—‘‘ On the afternoon of Monday (29th October), but especially on Tuesday, and partially on Wednesday (31st), vast shoals of fish, of the genus Scomberesowx, technically known by the name of Saury Pike, ascended the river Forth, and were gladly welcomed by the citizens of Alloa, more especially by the humbler classes of the community. The river Forth, betwixt Kincardine and Alloa, during the days above mentioned (particularly Tuesday), was literally swarming with these fish, and millions of them have from first to last been captured. Hundreds of people lined both banks of the river on successive days, and came away with bags, baskets, and boxes, laden with the herrings; hun- dreds of young people, while wading along the margins of the river, picked up armsful of the fish; parties cruizing about on the river ga- thered up the herrings as rapidly as they chose with their hands, from the sides of their small boats; parties in Alloa, Kincardine, Kennet, Alva, Tillicoultry, and Stirling, obtained cart-loads of them, and sold them to ready purchasers; and numbers of the fish were destroyed by the paddles of the Stirling steamers.” He believed they had been found generally along the coasts of the Firth; the great body of fish, however, appeared at the upper part, which was narrow, and perhaps, from confining the shoals, brought them more distinctly under the no- tice and reach of the people. Those he examined had generally six fin- lets following the dorsal, and seven after the anal fin. The pectoral fins are small, and somewhat notched cr forked at their extremities. The dorsal fins are dusky in colour, the pectorals lighter, with a white spot on each, and the ventrals and anals nearly white. Two curious keel-like edges commence on each side at the lower edge of gill coverts, and run about one-fourth of an inch apart, nearly the whole length of the body, ter- minating generally about three-fourths of an inch from the commencement of the tail. When cooked it was very good eating, not unlike the macke- rel, and contained a considerable quantity of oil; a fisherman informed him that he obtained a gill of beautifully pure oil from some four or five individuals. A. Whyte, Esq., Queensferry, sent him several specimens, and in a note, dated the 14th November, refers to them having entirely and suddenly disappeared a short time before. <“‘ One old fisherman had known them for upwards of fifty years, but only once (about forty-five years ago) had he seen them in such quantities as this year. He believed the greatest numbers were taken along the shores; some of them swam with part of their heads above the water, and in this position several were shot by the watchmaker here with his fowling-piece.” A few specimens were next taken about the 19th of November, and on the
Royal Physical Society. 51
22d a considerable number were caught in the herring-nets off Queens- ferry. These, of course, were very perfect, the beak not being injured, as it generally was in those found on the shore (and of these he exhibited a perfect specimen). The east or north-east wind was very prevalent be- fore and during the first appearance of these fish; it then veered to the westward, and the fish disappeared ; and, on its again changing to the east, we had their recurrence at the latter part of November, to which he had just alluded; after which they finally disappeared. Dr Parnell, appa- rently, had never met with them. Vide “Essay on the Fishes of the Forth,”’ published in 1838.
2. On the Galactite of Hardinger ; with Analysis of Scottish Natrolites. By M. Forster Heppzz, M.D.
After submitting six analyses of Galactite (from the following localities —two from Glenfarg, red and white; from Campsie; two from Bishop- town, white and pink; and from Glenarbuck), Dr Heddle showed that this substance was merely Natrolite ; lime, in proportions from °16 up to 4-312, replacing a portion of the soda, giving to the mineral its charac- teristic whiteness and opacity, and doubtless preventing its assuming the definite form, which the pure mineral, under favourable circumstances, adopts.
Dr Heddle next submitted an analysis of a green mineral from Bow- ling Quarry, Cochney, and Bishoptown, which has been sold under the name of “ Stellite,’’ and which Professor R. D. Thomson considered Pec- tolite ; this was shown to be also Natrolite; lime was here present, as also magnesia and oxide of iron as impurities. -
The analysis of a specimen from Dumbarton Moor also showed 3°76 per cent. of lime, so that out of six localities, no specimen was free of this base.
The Bin above Burntisland and North Berwick were also mentioned as localities of this mineral; no analysis, however, of specimens from these places was submitted,
At Glenfarg alone in Scotland does this mineral occur distinctly crys- tallized, the form being 0 m of Brooke and Miller.
3. Notice of a variety of Cod, termed the “Lord Fish.’ By T. SrenceR Cozszoitp, M.D.
This variety consisted in a remarkable shortening of the body, arising from the coalescence of a great number of the vertebre immediately suc- ceeding the bones of the head. In the present example, twenty-one were united together, and the shortening thus produced had given to the animal a curiously grotesque appearance. ‘The middle dorsal fin was shortened, and the lateral longitudinal line arched very suddenly over the pectoral fins. Length, about 20 inches; depth, 8 inches. It corresponded very closely with the figure and description of this variety given in the second
52 Proceedings of the
edition of Yarrell’s ‘‘ British Fishes,” vol. ii., p. 229. The notice was accompanied with a preparation of the spine, and a coloured wax cast re- presenting the external characters.
Mr George Logan exhibited a drawing of a smaller specimen of ae same variety, which he had obtained several years ago from the Firth of Forth.
4. Notice of a Curious Habit of the Common Seal. By Mr Witu1am M‘Inrose. Communicated by T. Srencer Copsotp, M.D.
This communication, from an eye-witness, minutely described the man- ner in which the common seal caught and devoured its prey,—in this instance, a ballan wrasse, which the seal held in its fore-paws, and care- fully denuded of its skin before devouring.
5. Notice of the Ferruginous Duck, or White-Eyed Duck (Nyroca leu- copthalmos, Flem.), recently shot near Musselburgh. By Joun Auex. Smita, M.D.—(The specimen was exhibited).
The bird, an adult male, measured 162 inches from the point of the bill to the tip of tail; and 273 inches in breadth from point to point of its extended wings. The first primary is the longest, others gradually decreasing in length. From flexure of wing to point of first primary, measures 73 inches ; inside of wings and axillaries white. Its weight was 17 ounces. The trachea (which was exhibited) 53% inches long, is peculiar, the upper part being rather more than } of an inch in diameter, gradually expanding to 4 an inch, and again contracting to less than + of an inch towards the lower part, where it terminates in a bony and membranous labyrinth about 14 inch in length (well figured in ‘‘ Yarrell’s British Rirds).”’ The esophagus was about 72 inches in length; the stomach, a strong and muscular gizzard, was filled with seeds of the oat, mixed with small pieces of quartz and gravel. The intestines from pylorus to anus were 3 ft. 9 in. in length ; two ceca, one 42 in., the other 44 in. long, enter the gut about 24 inches from its lower extremity. The bird is an occasional winter visitant of England, but appears to have been very rarely seen in Scotland.
6. Dr J. A. Smith mentioned that, during the months of November and December, several flocks of the Mealy Redpoll, Linota canescens, Yar., had been observed in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, and num- bers had been taken by the bird-catchers. These birds were larger in size than the Lesser Redpoll, Linota lanaria, Yar., none of which had been taken along with them. Specimens were exhibited, varying in brightness of colour ; in some, the cheeks, breast, and the white or greyish rump, were tinged with rose-red; some had the plumage much edged with white. They had nat been found in such abundance in this neighbourhood for
Royal Physical Society. 53
many years. A collector informed Dr Smith he had tried in vain to get specimens from all the bird-catchers for the last two or three years.
Dr Smith also exhibited a Crested Grebe, Podiceps cristatus, recently killed in the estuary of the Tay.
Richard Burdon Sanderson, Esq., Warwick House, Newcastle-upon- Tyne, was elected a non-resident member.
The office-bearers for the session were unanimously elected as follows :—
Presidents.—Robert Chambers, Esq.; William H. Lowe, M.D.; J. H. Balfour, M.D., Professor of Botany, University of Edinburgh.
Cowncil.—Patrick Dalmahoy, Esq., W.S.; Hugh Miller, LL.D.; Ro- bert K, Greville, LL.D.; Rev. John Fleming, D.D., Professor of Na- tural Science, New College, Edinburgh ; William Rhind, Esq.; M. Fors- ter Heddle, M.D.
Secretary.—John Alexander Smith, M.D.
Assistant Secretary.—George Lawson, Esq.
Treasurer.— William Oliphant, Esq.
Honorary Librarvan.—Robert F. Logan, Esq.
LInbrary Committee.—John L. Stewart, Esq.; Alexander Bryson, Esq. ; Andrew Murray, Esq.
Wednesday, January 23. Wiit1am H. Lowe, M.D., President, in the Chair.
The following Donations to the Library were presented, and thanks voted to thedonors :—1. Proceedings of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophi- eal Society, No. IX., 1854-55 ; from the Society. 2. Essay on Meteorites, by R. P. Greg, Esq.; from Dr M. F. Heddle.
1. Note on the Late Stay of Swallows in 1855. By Rosert F. Loean, Esq.
The late stay of the swallow tribe in this country during the past autumn had, Mr Logan stated, considering the earliness and severity of the winter, been somewhat remarkable. It was well known that the ordi- nary period of the departure of the red-fronted or chimney swallow (Hir- undo rustica) was the end of September or beginning of October, and that of the house martin (Hirundo urbica) about the same time, or a few days later ; but last autumn numbers remained during October, and towards the end of the month a small flock of martins were to be seen every morn- ing, briskly hawking for insects, over the village of Duddingston. He saw some of them so late as the 10th of November, flying high in the air, and circling about with as much apparent ease as in the middle of sum- mer. In the south of England, as might be expected, they remained much latter. A correspondent of the “ Zoologist,” writing from Hast-
54 Proceedings of the
ings, remarks,—“ Yesterday (Dec. 6) there were several chimney swallows flying about my house; the previous night there had been a sprinkling of snow in the adjoining country. On the 23d of November, I left the neighbourhood of Uckfield, in Sussex, and at that time there were several house martins skimming about in front of the house though the weather was anything but warm.’ Another ornithologist writes from Penzance on the Ist of December,—‘‘ I observed up to Wednesday last, im this dis- trict, extending as far as Helston, flocks of house martins flying about, and hawking vigorously for insects.’’ In previous years, both species have occurred in England quite as late, and in some instances later, than the cases I have now cited ; but it is rarely they are seen so late in Scot- land. In 1842, on the 9th December, one martin was seen in Devonshire. In 1843, so late as the 10th of the same month, a swallow (H. rustica) was shot in the West Riding of Yorkshire. This was an adult bird, in full plumage, and in good condition, which rather militates against the opinion that they are always young birds, or weakly individuals, that re- main behind. In 1846, on the 18th of November, from fifteen to twenty martins were seen in Warwickshire. In 1848, one martin was shot on the coast of Suffolk. This was apparently a young bird; and on the 8th of the same month three others were observed at Deal, hawking under the cliff. Perhaps the most singular record of all, however, is that of the oc- currence, on the afternoon of January 18, 1837, on New Miiler Dam, near Wakefield, of three swallows, hawking and dipping as in the midst of summer. ‘The day is stated to have been ‘“ very mild and still.” To complete the list, the Revs. Andrew and Henry Matthews, in their ac- count of the birds of Oxfordshire, record the appearance of one swallow on the 28th of February 1846, and of three more on the following day. We have thus the recorded occurrence of swallows during the whole of the winter months; and it becomes a curious and difficult question to decide whether or not any of these may have been instances of re-animated hy- bernation. At all events, the facts went very far to prove that swallows could occasionally remain in this country through the winter.
2. Notice of the Arctic Skua (Lestris Parasitica, Tem.), shot in Skye im the Summer of 1855. By Peter A. Dassauvinte, Esq.
The specimen on the table was procured in Skye by John Richardson, Esq., Pencaitland. It appeared to be in the adult summer plumage. The two centre tail feathers gradually tapered to a point, and exceeded the others by eight inches. The season at which this specimen was taken was not a little remarkable, as it was not known to breed even on our most northern stations, and in the sparing notices of its occurrence it had ap- peared in the autumn or winter.
aie - ee
Royal Physical Society. 55
3. On Mesolite; Fardelite (Mesole) ; and Antrimolite. By M. Forster Heppiz, M.D.
By a series of analyses of these minerals, Dr Heddle showed that Me- solite and Mesole were not only distinct from Scolezite and Natrolite, but also from each other ; the Antrimolite of Thomson he referred to Mesolite, under which mineral also he considered that the Harringtonite of Thomson would fall.
The nomenclature of these zeolites seemed to be in a sad state of confu- sion. We had Mesotype, Mesolite, Mesole. Dr Heddle proposed that the unmeaning Mesotype be dropped for the expressive Natrolite; that Mesolite, as being in reality the intermediate mineral, be retained, and that Mesole give place to Faroelite, from the locality whence we obtained the choicest specimens of this substance.
From their composition, these minerals rank as follows :—
Natrolite, NaO, SiO; + Al, O;, SiO, + 2 HO.
Faroelite, (Na O, Ca 0?) Si0,° + 3 Al, O;, 2810, + 8 HO. Mesolite, (Na O, Ca O?) 810,° + 3 (Al, O;, SiO,) + 8 HO. Scolezite, CaO, SiO; + Al, O;, SiO, + 3 HO.
4, Mr David Page exhibited specimens of the Woodocrinus Macro- dactylus, a new genus a Encrinite recently figured and described by M. de Koninck.
» This rare and beautiful crinoid had as yet been found only in the upper beds of the carboniferous limestone in Yorkshire, and had been named by M. de Koninck after its discoverer, Edward Wood, Esq., Richmond, one of the most zealous and indefatigable of English collectors. The distinguishing features of the new encrinite were—its perfect sym- metry of arrangements, the body and arms, when extended, presenting a remarkable resemblance to the free-floating star-fishes. Its base consisted of five pieces, which, branching into ten sub-basals, again subdivided into twenty tapering fingers elegantly fringed with minute plumules. The stem was also peculiar in its jointings, the pieces being of equal size in the young stage, alternately large and small in the growing stage, and in the mature form presenting a double alternation of larger with smaller jointings. In few genera of the family were the parts so elegantly and symmetrically disposed; and from the peculiar construction of the cap and fingers, there was little difficulty in distinguishing the Woodo- erinite from other species. As yet it had been found only on the upper verge of the limestone, and immediately under the millstone-grit of York- shire; but he (Mr Page) had little doubt that the Scottish mountain limestone (which had yielded all the English forms) would also be found to contain the Woodocrinus. At all events, the Petalodus, which ap- peared to be a regular accompanying fossil in Yorkshire, had been found both at Carluke, at Bathgate, and in Fifeshire.
56 Proceedings of the
5. Mr Page next exhibited some new Crustacean Forms from the Forfar jlagstones, or base of the Old Red Sandstone in Scotland.
The first of these forms presented a remarkable union of phyllopod and isopod characters; was a small creature found in shoals among the fraz- ments of fucoid or aquatic plants ; and, from its curious caterpillar-like aspect, he proposed to name it provisionally Kampecaris Forfarensis. The second was a larger and still more remarkable form, presenting phylloped, peecilipod, and xiphosarus characters. To the head of a eurypterus was united the body of a lobster, and to this lobster-like body was attached the sword-like tail of a king-crab. Its organs of motion were a pair, on each ‘side, of long-jointed arms; and from fragments found on the slabs, it appeared to be furnished with minutely serrated jaw-feet, like the king- crab and fossil Pterygotus. This fossil appeared to be quite new to Pale- ontology ; and Mr Page proposed to name it provisionally Stylonarus ~ Powriensis, in allusion to its style-shaped tail, and after its discoverer, Mr Powrie of Reswallie. A third form which Mr Page exhibited was from the shaly mudstones of Upper Lanark, a series of strata apparently on a somewhat different horizon, but containing, like the Forfarshire beds, pterygotus, eurypterus, and other undescribed crustacea. This form Mr Page proposed to erect into a new family (Slimonia, after the discoverer of these Lanark crustacea) ; but as he intended to bring the subject be- fore the next meeting of the Society, in conjunction with what was now being done in London by Messrs Salter and Huxley, he would not dwell longer on these new discoveries than merely remark—/irst, that they opened up aitogether new views of crustacean affinities and arrangements ; and, second, that their discovery established in Britain a great zone of crustacean life, either on the upper verge of Siluria or on the lower verge of Devonia, hitherto unknown to geology.
On the motion of the Secretary, a vote of thanks was unanimously given to Mr Page for his interesting communications and exhibition of new and curious fossils.
6. On recent Discoveries in Helminthology. By James Warpzor, Esq.
Mr Wardrop gave a resumé of all that was known on this interesting and difficult subject.
Royal Physical Society. 57
Thursday, 28th February 1856. Rosert K. Grevitte, LL.D., in the Chair.
Andrew Wilson, Esq., 18 Young Street, was balloted for and elected a Member of the Society.
Dr J. A. Smrra said the Society was most anxious that members would put on record all rarities which came in their way, he would therefore allude to two captures which had come under his notice. The first, a specimen of the SHort Sun-risu, Orthagoriscus mola, Cuv., was brought up with the lead-line of H.M.S. cutter Woodlark, at the mouth of the Firth, off the Isle of May, on the 17th of October last. The men on hauling in the line were astonished at the immense weight they felt, and found, on its approaching the surface, they were bringing up a huge fish,—the line being over one of the large fins, and the fish apparently simply resting against it. The following are its dimensions, for which he was indebted to Mr John Anderson, fishmonger, George Street :—From the snout to the middle of the tail, 5 ft. 4 in. ; across the tail, from the extremities of the elongated dorsal and anal fins, 6 ft. 4 in. ; and it was 1 ft. 6 in. in thickness. Its weight was about 500 lbs. The second, was a PoRBEAGLE, Lamna cornubica, Flem., taken in a herring-net on the morning of the 17th of November last, near Inchkeith; it. measured 6 ft. 11 in. in length along the lateral line ; the dorsal fin being 1 foot in height.
The following Communications were read :— I. On Vigite, a new mineral (?) By M. Forster Heppie, M.D.
Sixteen miles north of Portree, in Skye, lies the farm town of Uig. At about the fifteenth milestone, the road makes an abrupt turn to the east, before descending the hill; and just at this spot a small quarry has been opened for the purpose of obtaining road-metal. In this quarry I obtained indifferent specimens of Faroelite, a single crystal of Analcime, and a few pieces of a substance which, being unknown to me, I analyzed, and which may be considered new. Should this be admitted, I would propose for it the name Uigite. It occurs in small nests in the amygdaloid, which is here very vesicular, is not distinctly crystallized, being in radiated sheafy plates, some- what resembling the structure of a plumose mica, but in general appearance _ intermediate between Faroelite and gryolite ; colour white, slightly yel- lowish ; lustre tremulous and pearly : hardness, 5:5, brittle ; specific gra- vity, 2°284 ; before the blow-pipe fuses readily and quietly, with strong reaction of soda, to a white opaque enamel, which is not frothy. On ana-
VOL. I. H
58 Proceedings of the
lysis, it afforded 45-98 per cent. of silica, 21:93 of alumina, 16°15 of lime, 4-7 of soda, and 11°25 water. These proportions give equivalents,—silica, 7; alumina, 3; lime, 4; soda,1; water,9. The mineral, therefore, con- sists of 1 equivalent of a silicate of lime and soda (where the lime is to the soda as 4 to 1), 1 equivalent of a sesquisilicate of alumina, and 9 of water. The calculated percentage proportions of which compound are,— silica, 46°09; alumina, 21°93; lime, 15°97; soda, 4:46; water, 11°55; which agree closely with the analytical results. No mineral has the above formula, which differs, however, from that of Faroelite (Mesole), merely in the insertion of the compound 2 (Ca O, SiO) + HO. We have now to see if it be not a compound mineral, 7.¢., a combination of two minerals (being capable of expression by a rational formula, it cannot be a mixture). For this purpose, let us look for an instant at gyrolite, the new mineral lately discovered by Dr Anderson in Skye. Thatche- mist gives 2 (Ca O, Si O;) + 3H O, as the formula of gyrolite, which re- quires 15-40 per cent. of water, but admits that the mineral readily loses water, and that none but specimens newly broken from the rock contain so large a quantity. While I myself am strongly inclined to think that even fresh specimens have an atom less of water, yet I am not at present prepared definitely to assert so, but I am prepared to assert the specimens of gyrolite ordinarily procurable, and such as are to be found in cabinets, have more probably the formula 2 (Ca O, Si O,) + H O—as I have ob- tained many such percentage proportions of water as the following :— 6°417, 5°98, 6-83, &c., the last given formula requiring 5°72. Gyrolite would thus seem to be a mineral which, like lomontite, loses a certain quantity of water at once on the very exposure to the air, and, like lo- montite, this loss is accompanied with other changes, as of form, colour, lustre, &c.; for, when fresh, gyrolite is colourless, transparent, of a vit- reous lustre, and tough; after a short exposure it becomes white, opaque, of a pearly lustre, and crumbles readily. Now, this latter formula of gyrolite is the very compound which we have to add to the formula of Faroelite, to convert it into the form of Uigite, as before shown. Three equivalents of Faroelite, united with one of gyrolite, will give a compound having the following percentage proportions :—Silica, 46°51; alumina, 21°20 ; lime, 16°62 ; soda, 4-31; water, 11:36; agreeing closely with the analysis of Uigite, and giving the same formula.- I have already noticed — that in appearance Uigite stands intermediate between the above minerals. Under this consideration of the subject, therefore, Uigite is made up of three equivalents of Faroelite, and one of gyrolite ; if we are not allowed to consider gyrolite as having ordinarily the above formula, then Uigite must stand as a simple and not a compound mineral. Mineralogy is in that stage when the men of the present age have to draw the sponge through many of the works of those who have gone before them, to have their own in turn expunged by those who follow after. Fearing that this
Royal Physical Society. 59
might be the fate of Uigite, I do not dogmatically thrust it into the world as anew mineral, but waiting for more information, would merely make a note that such a compound as I have described is to be found at Uig, in Skye.
Il. Remarks on the Scientific bearings of recent discoveries in Helmin- thology. By Jamzs Warnprop, Esq.
Ill. Notice of acwrious Metamorphosis in a Zoophyte-like Animal. By Cuarztes W. Peacu, Esq., Wick.
In March last year, I obtained from a fisherman’s line an old and much corroded valve of Psammobia ferroensis, which had been hooked up from deep water ; on it I noticed jelly-like spots, and placed it in a shallow glass of sea water ; the next day I fancied that I could make out, with my pocket lens, zoophyte-like animals. At once I transferred the shell in a watch glass, filled with sea water, to my microscope, and was delighted to find my suspicion correct, for after a little management, so as to catch the light, I could see the forms as figured (Fig. 1) attached to the shell by a short
Fig. 1.
foot-stalk, a little inflated near the upper part, tipped with a slightly raised and rounded centre, from which extended four long and four short leaf-like arms, each granulated down the centre; one or two had, in ad- dition, springing from these, delicate tentacle-like arms, probably in a farther stage of development. They were easily disturbed, but soon again displayed themselves ; their transparency, added to this shyness, rendered it difficult to catch their forms. At first I thought they were the early stage of a Hydractina, and probably, H. brevicornis of Miller, men-
tioned in Johnston’s second edition of ‘‘ The British Zoophytes,”’ page 35. HQ
60 Proceedings of the
My next examination was on the 2d of April. After giving them a sup- ply of sea water, they were still fixed; I could, however, perceive a dif- ference, the centre of the head more raised and cone-shaped, and the arms shorter. I continued my examinations daily; and on the 6th, in- stead of moored creatures, I had a fleet of probably one hundred minute, free, naked-eyed, medusoid-like beauties (Fig. 2), jerking about in all diree- tions, with the exception of size all alike, perfectly transparent; the umbrella well rounded and pilose ; the sub-umbrella large; each had four large ocelli-like bulbs on the edge of the mantle, furnished with a stiffly turned- up tentacle, tipped with a disk having a dark centre ; this surrounded by a light ring, and outside a darker edge, dark but short bars arranged in a quincunx manner on these tentacula. The ocelli were composed of mi- nute, dark granules. As well as these long tentacula, there were four smaller and shorter ones, also turned up, but no ocelli where the edge of the mantle is shown. On the lower part of the mantle runs a canal com- municating with the bulbs of the large tentacula ; in the canal I observed a granular circulation passing along, and, as if revolving in the bulbs and a short way down each large tentacle ; into these bulbs smaller granules descended from the sub-umbrella, by the gastro-vascular canals ; these canals extended to the upper part of the stomach, the stomach being at- tached to them, and is rounded on the upper part, and divided into four lobes ; it then narrows and runs out bell-shaped to the quadrate mouth, which has four long lips fimbriated at the tips. They were very active up to the 10th, when some little change took place. I supplied small quantities of water, and used every precaution, from being anxious to see all I could of them. On the 11th they became sickly, and the upper part of the umbrella in eight festoons, the tentacula slightly drooping. On the 13th, nearly inactive, hyaline, and turned inside out. I began to hope that, as the mouth had become elongated into a peduncele-like form, they were about to become fixed again; they, however, dwindled away, and although I kept the water for months, I could trace nothing more. I have not yet seen Steenstrup’s work on ‘‘ The Alternation of Genera,” therefore am unable to say whether it may be one of the interesting facts noticed by him. They differed in the jixed state from any of the zoophytes figured and described by Johnston ; and when /ree from all the naked-eye meduse figured in the monograph of Forbes, it may be one of the latter in its earlier stages, and probably is, from being pilose, this being the case with many of the young of the medusoid tribe which have fallen under my notice, and I have seen many. This is the most interest- ing of all. The most like the free state, is Lizzia octopunctata of Forbes, Pl. xii., fig. 3; it agrees thus far in the form of the umbrella, in having 8 tentacular bulbs, 4 gastro-vascular canals, the shape of the sto- mach, quadrate mouth, and long fimbriate-tipped lips. It differs in being pilose, and having only 8 tentacula, instead of 20, viz., 3 at each large
Royal Physical Society. 6L
ocelli bulb, and 2 at each of the smaller ones ; even this difference in the number of tentacula, &c., ought not to put it out of court, for I have seen, and have a long list of notes and numerous drawings of the strange changes from the young to the adult state of these lovely gems. At present I cannot spare the time to make the drawings and extend the notes. I present this fact, so that others may be aware that such transformations are to be met with on our own coasts, and that by watching for shells from deep water thus begemmed, a series of observatious may be made, and more facts collected, so that the true nature and phases of these Pro- teus-like objects may be made out.
IV. A Letter was read from the Rev. H. M. Wanpett, Old Calabar, to Anprew Murray, Hsq., containing additional information re- garding the new Electric Fish (Malapterurus Beninensis, Mur.)
Mr Wappet1 writes as follows :—‘“‘ As you attach some importance to an observation I had formerly made concerning the power of the small electric fish of this river to benumb other fish with which they come into contact, I should have verified my observation by renewed experiments. An opportunity soon offered of accomplishing this object, and I now com- municate the result, which you will probably deem to be of a very satis- factory description. I have four electric fish in a large basin, the largest about six inches long, and as thick as the neck ofa quart bottle ; the smallest about three inches long, and the thickness of your finger. They have been there in a healthy state for some months. I procured eight small fishes, varying from two to three and a half inches in length, which I putin withthe others. The electric fish continued, as usual, side by side, quiescent at the bottom, while their visitors swam and darted about in a lively manner, and even ventured down among their dangerous neigh- bours, rousing them to activity, passing through their ranks, and dis- turbing them not a little, without seeming to be either afraid of them or molested by them. They frequently rubbed sides without any effect similar to what I had before observed being produced, and I began to fear that my former observation would not be confirmed. Having watched their movements in vain, I retired for a while, but returned in half an hour to see how they were getting on. I then found the new-comers, all but one, the largest of them, lying at the bottom among the electric fish. Having taken out the seven which were evidently struck, I found four of the smallest quite dead and stiff, their backs twisted or curved, and their mouths gaping open. Three of them, though much benumhed, revived when transferred to another basin of water, and, after an hour or two, recovered perfectly, and were as lively as before. The one which escaped at first was left with his dangerous companions, but was not so lively as at the first. It would swim about a little, then sink, again rise and make
62 Proceedings of the
a few darts, and then sink again. Tired of watching him, I went on with my book, but after a little returned, and found him quite dead, his back curved downwards very considerably, and his mouth gaping half an inch open. Taking him by the tail, I lifted him out as stiff as if frozen, and further, observed his colour quite gone ; a very dark brown before, he Was now as pale as ashes. I had noticed something of this change of colour in the first four affected, but not of so marked a kind as in this last one. The three which recovered from the first attack remained to be tried again, and were put in with the electric fish a second time, when quite strong and lively. They swam and frisked about as playfully and safely as on the first occasion, and I watched them intently, and for a longer time than before, but observed no movement on the part of the electric fish, though the others sometimes darted down among them. They seemed to be more intent on eyeing me than minding their little visitors, one of which was nearly three inches long, the others about two each. ‘Tired of looking and seeing nothing, I left them as before, and after a little re- turned, when all three were lying benumbed at the bottom. Being re- moved to another basin, one of them revived, the others were dead. The dead ones were not, however, so powerfully affected as their companions in misfortune ; they were not rigid, nor contorted, nor pallid, nor gaping. Obviously they were not so severely struck as the others had been, the powers of the electric fish being probably by this time somewhat weakened. The one that still survived recovered completely to admit ofa new experi- ment. J confess to some misgivings of feelings on subjecting it to a third and final trial ; but a remark in your note, if the electric fish eat those they stunned, was yet unanswered. Therefore, in retiring for the night, I gave it to them for their supper, if they should have any faney to make that use of their victim. But in the morning I found him, though dead, yet otherwise uninjured. If you ask me what do they live on? I cannot answer. Those with me eat nothing. They are on my study table, and I see them daily, but give them nothing. Even their water is seldom changed, yet are they strong and lively. As I am told that they lie much in the ooze at the bottom of the river, I have given them sand to lie on, which they sometimes stir up with their tails. A few times daily, but chiefly in the evening and early night, they plunge about and make the water muddy. I cannot learn that they have been ever found larger than a herring.”
Specimens of the Malapterurus, recently received from Calabar, were again exhibited to the Society by Mr Witt1am Ontpnant, and were by him presented to Members, for further examination into their electric organization.
Royal Physical Society. 63
V. On the Reproduction of Cydippe pomiformis. By T. Srrerarme Wericut, M.D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh.
Accounts of Cydippe may be found in every manual of Natural History and Comparative Anatomy. Those written by British authors are generally distinguished by a singular variety in error both of description and illustration. I have, therefore, thought it necessary to give to the Society a sketch of its anatomical structure, as maintained chiefly by Agassiz in his admirable work on the Acalephz of North America, and which my own observations assure me is correct.
Cydippe (see fig. 1) may be briefly Wig. I. described as a transparent ovoid body of gelatinous consistence, hav- ing its surface longitudinally sul. cated (like that of a melon) by eight furrows, in each of which lies a band of muscular tissue. These muscular bands serve as a basis of attachment to numerous flat paddles or comb-shaped fringes of cilia, which are ranged at nearly equal distances along the whole length of a. Mouth opening into stomach, the bands, and form a locomotive which communicates at d with
i : 6 b large central canal of water- apparatus by which the animal rowg vascular system. ccc Longi-
itself through the water with admir- ae Cee pe aie able swiftness and grace. In the lateral water-vascular canals. e¢ allied acalephs, Beroe, Alcinoe, and fs Recenticle ne uaa Bolina, each of these paddles is a transparent plate, more or less divided or fringed only at its extremity, while in Cydippe the plate is entirely divided to its attachment into a fringe of sepa- rate cilia. Agassiz considers that the cilia are composed of a peculiar substance, but I find that their action on polarized light is proportionate to that exerted by a plate of horn of equal thickness. The cilia are, therefore, in all probability, sete and their embryonic development, hereafter described,
indicates that they are analogous to the locomotive sete of the
64 Proceedings of the
Annelides. Immediately beneath, or internal to the muscular bands, and corresponding with them in length and breadth, are eight canals excavated in the gelatinous tissue of the ani- mal, and connected by a system of transverse branches with a much larger cavity, which occupies the axis of the body along its whole length, and admits the sea-water by two orifices situated at its inferior extremity, capable of being opened or closed at the will of the animal. The whole of these canals form a water-vascular system, through which a constant c¢ir- culation of fluid takes place, urged by the fine cilia with which the cavities are lined.
The digestive system consists of a flattened sac, about two- thirds the length of the animal, suspended within the large central canal of the water-vascular system. The upper ex- tremity of this sac terminates in a linear mouth situated on- the upper surface of the body, while its lower extremity opens into the large canal in which it is inclosed, so that the pro- ducts of digestion are (as in Actinia) at once admitted into the main eavities of the body, in which the functions of nutrition and respiration are carried on together. There also exist two other large cavities in the body connected with the water- vascular canals, which serve as receptacles for the tentacular apparatus, the use of which has caused much difference of opinion amongst writers on this branch of Natural History.
As far as I have been able to ascertain, nothing is certainly known as to the reproduction of Cydippe. Siebold (in his work on Comparative Anatomy) has stated that Mertens has observed detached corpuscles from the body of Cestum and Cydippe swimming freely about and rapidly enlarging, but that his observations were there limited. Professor Grant has imagined that he has detected ovaries, consisting of two lengthened clusters of small spherical gemmules, of a lively crimson colour, extending along the sides of the stomach; but his description of the anatomy of Cydippe is so inaccurate, that his remarks on its ovarian system are not to be relied on. Mr Robert Paterson of Belfast (who has written an excellent monograph on this Acaleph) has not been able to verify Dr Grant’s ob- servation, although he has examined several hundred speci-
Royal Physical Society. 65
mens; but he has seen numerous transparent gemmules in the water in which Cydippes were kept. Agassiz states, that although he had kept Cydippe alive for months during the spring, he had never seen in any of them anything like ovaries or spermaries. He also writes that although he has watched Bolina through six successive months, from December to June, he had never succeeded in discovering the sexual system even in its most rudimentary state, and that of their embryonic development nothing is known; and yet these Acalephs fre- quently swarm in the seas both of Europe and America. The reproductive processes in several species of the pulmograde Acalephze have been investigated with great success by Sars, Dalyell, John Reid, Steenstrup, and others. The Steganop- thalmata (of which Aurelia aurita, the common “ jelly-fish” of the Firth of Forth, is an example) at certain seasons of the year pour forth from their ovaries multitudes of germs, which affix themselves to shells and other bodies, and became many- tentacled hydraform polypes. These polypes, after multiply- ing by gemmation for many months, perhaps years, begin to resolve themselves by transverse fissure into minute medusz, which undergo many changes before they arrive at their adult form and size. The Gymnopthalmata (those tiny naked-eyed medusz which, visible to the naturalist alone, swarm in im- mense multitudes around our coasts) emit ova which are developed into polypes of various form, either single, as Cory- morpha, or united together by creeping fibres or stems, in colonies of plant-like form, as Clava, Coryne, Tubularia, Cam- panularia. In spring, these zoophytes put forth buds, either from their polyparies or from the polypes themselves. The buds rapidly enlarge, and are developed into bell-shaped me- dusze, which, after remaining attached for a short time to the parent stem, become detached, and flap themselves away in the surrounding water. The reproduction of these plant-like ani- mals bears, indeed, a remarkable resemblance to that of the true plant. The flower of the plant produces a seed, the me- dusa of the zoophyte an ovum ; the seed grows into a stem and leaves, the ovum into a stem-like polypary and polypes; the plant multiplies itself by suckers and bulbils, the polypary by
66 Proceedings of the
stolons and gemme; the plant puts forth flowers, the polypary medusze, which alone have true reproductive organs.*
* Note on diacious reproduction in Zoophytes.—I have stated the development of medusz from polypes, in accordance with the elegant expression of the fact first given by Dr Carpenter, but there is still some obscurity with regard to this subject. It ® not correct to state generally, that Campanularia, Tubularia, Coryne, and Clava produce medusa-buds, although some varieties of all these species do so. Schultze has observed in Campanularia geniculata, in place of medusa-buds, the production of capsules filled with spermatozoa. The pro- duction of ova, and their direct development into young polypes, has been noticed in the ovarian capsules of Zubularia indivisa by Mummery. Ihave repeatedly seen large polyparies of Coryne glandulosa, all the polypes of which bore buds containing spermatozoa, developed from a stalk traversing the axis of the bud, the whole polypary being, in each case, unisexual and male. While in other polyparies of the same zoophyte, the reproductive buds were filled with ova also developed from the exterior of a hollow central stalk, a diverticulum of the alimentary canal; the entire polypary in these cases being female. Insome species of Clava, the polypes (which are not separate as hitherto described, but attached together by a fleshy basis, investing a horny polypidum somewhat similar to that of Hydractinia, or by a slender creeping thread inclosed in a membranous sheath) bear reproductive capsules, some of which contain sper- matozoa and others ova; but the polypes bearing male capsules are never found grouped on the same polypary with those carrying female capsules. I may state that many, if not all, the composite hydroid zoophytes are not only uni- sexual with regard to their individual polypes, but also dicecious, the male and female reproductive organs being always situated on different polyparies. I have already observed dicecious reproduction in Coryne glandulosa (Dalyell), Clava, two species, Hydractinia echinata, Sertularia cupressina, Plumularia falcata, Campanularia lacerata, Sertularia rosacea, and several others. I hesi- tated for some time to agree with Drs Allman and Carpenter in considering the marcescent reproductive capsules, which in some of these zoophytes appear at first sight to be mere sacs, filled with spermatozoa or ova, as homologous with the budding medusz, in which the organs of sensation, locomotion, nutrition, and even of reproduction, are highly developed and distinctly differentiated, which maintain an independent life long after the decay of the polype from which they have budded, and some of which multiply themselves indefinitely by gemmation before their true sexual organs appear; but I am convinced, after careful examination of many genera, that this is nearly a correct view of the case. The peduncle of the medusa-bud appears to me to be homologous with the entire reproductive capsule (of Coryne glandulosa, &c.), and the um- brella to be a superadded organ, having the nature of a polypary or ccenosare (Allman). Very lately I have found at the Scougal Rocks, near North Berwick, a very interesting Coryne, in which each polype of the cluster bore a single long cylindrical medusa-bud without tentacles. The peduncle consisted of a thick white mass nearly filling the umbrella, and was found to consist of an inner and outer coat (endoderm and ectoderm) widely separated from each other
Royal Physical Society. 67
Agassiz, after careful examination of Cydippe and Bolina, and comparison of their anatomy with that of Sarsia mirabilis, one of the Gymnopthalmata, considers it highly probable that the former are, like Sarsia, the product by gemmation of hydroid polypes; and he particularly directs the attention of future investigators to the determination of this question. On this point it has been my good fortune to make the following cb- servations: I found in the water of Morecambe Bay, one day in June 1853, swarms of the Cydippe pomiformis. Every lit- tle creek and channel in the sand-banks was full of them, where a day or two before and afterwards not one was to be seen. On examining one of these animals confined in a jar of sea-water, I observed a great number of transparent vesicles in the lateral water-vascular canals. Some of the vesicles were floating freely in the circulating fluid, but the greater number were attached in pairs to the inner surface of the muscular bands, a pair between every two of the ciliary pad- dles, fig. 2. The constant motion of the pad-~ Fig 2. dles rendered it difficult to ascertain the true nature of these vesicles ; but the next day a {ff considerable number were floating freely in the \ i ; jar, and were placed under the microscope. rp They consisted of a transparent and highly re- _ [Ili 1k I fractive vitellus, containing a germinal vesicle vq i and germinal spot, and surrounded at a consi-
il
derable distance by a thin envelope or shell. Several of the ova were placed in a small trough of sea-water, and carefully watched for some days, but no further development occurred in them. In the meantime the water containing the parent Cydippe was examined every day with a single lens, and after a few days minute bodies about the size of a rape-seed were detected swimming amongst the eggs. These proved to be the hatched young of Cydippe. The rest of the ova were found in all stages of the advance towards full development. In illus-
by amass of well-formed spermatozoa; the two coats were united at the mouth, which was surrounded by a ring of large thread cells. The peduncle was, in fact, but little advanced from the simple sperm-sac I have described above. All the meduse on the polypary were males. May we not infer from this the pro- bability of the medusa-bearing zoophytes being also diccious ?
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tration of which I have given the accompanying sketches. Fig. 3 shows the newly extruded ovum with yolk and shell. In fig. 4 the yolk has become irregular in shape by cleavage, granular, and opaque. In fig. 5 the embryo is elongated into an irregular cylinder, and is encircled by a wreath of long cilia, by which it is rapidly whirled round in the shell. In this stage it bears a close resemblance to the embryo of an annelid (Phyllodoce) when newly hatched. In fig. 6 the ciliary
Fig. 3. Fig. 4. Fig. 5. Fig. 6.
wreath of fig. 5 is broken up and divided into four bundles, the upper part of the embryo has become hyaline, by the gradual absorption of the yolk, and the tentacles have appeared, as simple granular threads, and destitute of the lateral cirri which adorn those of the adult. In fig. 7 (the newly-hatched Cydippe) the four bundles of cilia have extended themselves into short bands,—a still further absorption of the yolk has taken place ; and the tentacles have become greatly lengthened. My observations were here arrested; all the young Acalephs died at this stage, which they attained in about five days. The Cydippe, when newly released from ovum, is still in a low state of develop- ment. I have not been able to detect in it } either mouth or water-vascular canals; the ; ciliary bands are only four in number, instead « of eight, as in the adult; the tentacles are not yet fringed ; a considerable part of the yolk still remains to be absorbed, and is amassed at the lower extremity of the animal and about the ciliary bands, where the lateral tubes of the water-vascular system may be looked for. In this respect it bears a remarkable resemblance to the me- dusze of some of the coryne-form polypes, in several species of which I have noticed that the walls of the radiating tubes,
Fig. 7.
Royal Physical Society. 69
and those of the circular tubes round the mouth of the um- brella, are for some time after detachment, rendered opaque by a layer of red granular matter, which is completely ab- sorbed as the animal advances towards maturity. It is prob- able that the young Cydippe undergoes several changes before it arrives at maturity, but I was never able to find it again in its first or more advanced stages in the waters of Morecambe Bay. Ihad looked in vain for spermaries in several speci- mens of the adult in which there were noova. It can, indeed, be scarcely said to possess even ovaries, as the eggs are not amassed together in groups, but are developed separately from the wall of the lateral tubes of the water-vascular system. *
This notice on the reproduction of Cydippe is, therefore, incomplete ; but I have thought it advisable to bring it before the Society, as I may not have an opportunity of pursuing the inquiry farther, and it possesses some importance, in so far as it proves that the generative process in this class of aca- lephs is very different from that which obtains in the stegan- opthalmatous and gymnopthalmatous meduse.
On the function of the tentacles——The function of the ten- tacles in Cydippe has always been a qguestio vewata amongst naturalists. These magnificent appendages are generally found closely packed in two large canals communicating with the water-vascular system, and opening by wide apertures in the lower hemisphere of the body. When the Acaleph is floating at rest near the surface of the water, the tentacles are expanded, and depend from beneath, like long white curling plumes, to a distance of twenty times the length of the animal. Each of these organs consists of a single tubular thread, fringed on one side by numerous closely-set cirri, which are ranged parallel to each other like the teeth of a comb or the barbs of a feather. Their surfaces are crowded with minute thread cells, or stinging organs, and the whole apparatus is capable of being instantly
* Since the above was read to the Society, I have, through the kindness of Mr Goodsir, received the Hore Tergestine of Will, who, in his account of the reproductive system of Hucharis multicornis, an acaleph allied to Cydippe, describes the ovaries and spermaries as attached to opposite sides of the lateral water-vascular canals, He therefore makes these animals hermaphrodite, a fact
which is open to doubt.
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retracted within its cell at the approach of danger. Blainville regarded the tentacles as instruments for the capture of prey. Patterson has contested this opinion, and believes that they cannot be made to approach the mouth, as they are situated at the opposite extremity of the body. Dr Carpenter regards them as locomotive organs; but it is difficult to imagine how they can be used for that purpose. I had frequent opportuni- ties of seeing these animals taking their prey at Morecambe Bay by the aid of their tentacles, and was delighted with the address they displayed in using these seemingly unmanageable appendages. The food of Cydippe was easily ascertained, as the stomachs of many of the specimens taken were packed with minute crustacea. ‘To ascertain how the latter were captured, I threw one of them into a jar in which was a Cydippe which had evidently not dined that day. It was in- stantly caught by one of the tentacles. The Acaleph at once became very animated, and performed a series of somersaults until it had succeeded in hitching the tentacle which held its prey across the widely-gaping mouth as over a pulley. The tentacle was then contracted by successive jerks, until the morsel was hauled up to and dropped into the stomach. ‘This experiment was frequently repeated, with precisely the same results, by myself and friends, with the same and other spe- cies of Cydippe.
VI. On Two new Actinias from Arran. By T. Srretnizt Wrieat, M.D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. (Plate VI.)
(1.) Acrinia onnatTA.—Body cylindrical, smooth, orange-brown, spotted with white; tentacles quinquiserial, four inner rows - grayish-white banded with purple-brown, outer row half the length of inner rows, orange tipped with gray.
I found this very showy Actinia in September last on the shore below South Corrigills, Isle of Arran. It inhabited small deep basins in the rock, situated nearly at high-water mark, and densely filled with a variety of algze. When the alge -
WH.LIZAAS LITH.
< = <t =z [ia So < = |= oO <
Royal Physical Society. 71
were pushed aside the brilliant colours of the Actinias ren- dered them very conspicuous, and at once assured me that I had discovered a new species. The largest specimens, when fully extended, measure about 24 inches in length by 14 inch in diameter. The body is a rich orange brown marked with white spots. These spots, which are very small at the foot of the animal, increase in size as they approach the disk. They are arranged along faint yellowish lines which run parallel to each other from the base to the disk. The ground colour of the disk is generally a uniform deep purple-brown, which passes between the tentacles and marks their base with irregular lines and reticulations, but in some specimens the uniformity of colour is broken by irregular cloudy patches of transparent pearly white. The labial lobes of the mouth are orange, and are placed in the centre of a star of sixty fulvous rays, thirty longer and thirty shorter placed alternately; the long rays are slightly forked at their extremities, like the scales of a moth’s wing; the short ones terminate ina rectangular point. The ten- tacles, about two hundred in number, are arranged in five rows; the four inner rows are grayish-white, encircled by broad bands of pale purple-brown. The outer row consists of about one hun- dred closely-set tentacles, half the length of the inner rows ; their colour is gray, but about three-fourths of their upper sur- face is coloured from the base towards the tip by a broad patch of orange-red (red-lead). Actinia ornata, when irritated, ejects fulvous threads in great profusion from the mouth and the pores in its body into which they are again withdrawn. These threads are covered with the usual urticating cells, and writhe about as they depend from the animal. They are moved partly by the contractility of their walls, which throws them into spiral coils, and partly by the cilia with which their surfaces are covered. They attach themselves with considerable tenacity to any animal substances with which they come in contact, and no doubt constitute a formidable apparatus for defence. Four young ones, produced by as many specimens of Actinia ornata in the last six months, were born with a double row of tentacles, the inner long, the outer short and tinged with orange-red as in the adult. The figures in Plate VI., en-
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graved from a beautiful drawing by Mr Weisse, artist, Queen Street, show the animal in different stages of expansion and contraction. The lithographer has given too purple a tinge to the tentacles, otherwise the plate is very characteristic.
(2.) ACTINIA BELLIS var. fusca.—Disk and tentacles of a uniform brown.
Actinia bellis, which is not described by Johnson as a native of Scotland, was found in great numbers in the rock- pools below South Corrigills. The common variety, with a variegated disk, described by Gaertner, Hassall,and Couch, was the more abundant; but a very beautiful one also occurred, the disk and tentacles of which were a pure unmixed brown of various shades. The body was white, pure pink, or pink marked with spots or crossing lines of white. This variety was very constant, and showed no disposition to diverge into the common one. In some of the pools these Actinias were as- sembledin large masses, and so closely packed together that their disks only were visible, and they were at first mistaken for a thick growth of alge. They were never found intermingled with the other variety. In captivity both varieties proved very proli- fic; the young of the brown Actinia could be readily distin- guished from the others by their dark disks, and by the brown lines with which their bodies were striated. These lines cor- respond, to the internal longitudinal septa, and disappear with the increasing age of the animal.
Wednesday, 26th March. Wututam H. Lowe, M.D., President, in the Chair.
The Rev. Zerub. Baillie, of the United Presbyterian Calabar Mission, was duly elected a Member of the Society.
The following Communications were read :—
I. On Zoological Classification. By Professor MacponaLp, St Andrews.
Professor MacponaLp submitted to the consideration of the Society the system of classification he had for some time prepared, which, he con- sidered, possessed advantages over any of those now in use.
Royal Physical Soctety. 73
II. Monograph of the Genus Catops. By ANDREW Murray, Edinburgh.
Notwithstanding Mr. Spence’s able Monograph of the British species of this genus, and the excellent works of Erichson, Sturm, Redtenbacher, Kraatz and others, its study is still attended with so much difficulty, that I imagine the following attempt to clear up the synonymy, and to make the species more easily recognizable, will be welcome, particularly to British entomo- logists.
When I commenced my examination of the genus, with a view to publishing the results, I applied to my entomological friends for their assistance both in the way of information and communication of specimens, an application which was cordially responded to. I have thus had the advantage of carefully ex- amining Mr. Waterhouse’s collection, which I believe to be the best representative of the Spencian species extant ;—the deter- mination having been submitted to and approved by Mr. Spence himself, with this qualification, that he (Mr. Spence) had de- scribed some of his species from specimens belonging to others, to whom they had been returned, so that the type specimens were scattered, and the certainty of accuracy derivable from the actual comparison of specimens with the types was in these imstances no longer attainable. It is on the faith of Mr. Water- house’s collection therefore that I principally depend for the identity of the names with the species described by Spence, where the descriptions themselves have failed me.
From Mr. Stephens’s collection now in the British Museum I have in like manner endeavoured to identify the species de- scribed by him, and as his specimens of Spence’s species in a majority of instances correspond with Mr. Waterhouse’s, they so far confirm the authority of that gentleman. I have further had the advantage of examining the species in the Jardin des Plantes ;—those of M. Lucas and of M. Chevrolat (who left the whole of his large collection of Catops for months in my hands), and those of M. Fairmaire, M. Javet, and other French entomolo- gists. To M. Kraatz of Berlin, whose elaborate and admirable revision of the European species of the genus shows the atten- tion he has bestowed upon the subject, I owe especial thanks. Besides favouring me with his opinion upon my ideas, he has furnished me with a nearly complete series of his species, and entrusted those he could not spare to me for examination, so that I have in general the advantage, when speaking of any view entertained by him, of knowing with certainty the iden- tity of the species under discussion. In relation to the North American species I beg particularly to record my obligations to
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Dr. Leconte of Philadelphia, Dr. Asa Fitch of Salem, and Mr. Calverly of New York. To our British entomologists, Dr. Power, Mr. J.T. Syme, Mr. Hislop, Rev. W. Little, Rev. Hamlet Clark, Mr. Guyon, Mr. Bates, Dr. Lowe and others, I also owe many thanks. They have entrusted to me the whole of their species for as long a period as I chose to retain them, and the whole of the gentlemen I have named have liberally placed their duplicates at my disposal. I take this opportunity to tender to each of them individually my best thanks for their kindness.
With this acknowledgement of my obligations and expla- nation of the sources of my information, I shall now in the first place cast a rapid glance at what has been done by previous authors, first in the European species and afterwards in the exotic; I shall then give detailed descriptions of all the different species which have been described or have come under my notice (among which will be found one or two new species), and lastly conclude by giving a short dichotomous table of the” chenes a of the Huropean species of the genus.
The species which compose this genus were sateen by ancient authors among several other genera. DeGeer placed - one species under Dermestes, and Geoffroy another under Silpha. Fourcroy placed the only one he knew under Peltis, Panzer under Helops, Frohlich under Luperus, Fabricius under Cistela and Hydrophilus, Marsham under Mordella, and Linnzeus (pos- sibly) under Chrysomela. Latreitle was the first who, in his ‘Précis des Caractéres Génériques des Insectes,’ established the ~ genus under the name of Choleva. This was im 1802, and about two years after it was also recognized first by Paykull, and after-_ wards by Knoch, who each gave it another name—Knoch that of Ptomaphagus which was adopted by Illiger, and Paykull that of Catops which was adopted by Fabricius, and has been retamed by most subsequent authors. By the rule of priority therefore the name should be Choleva, but I am glad that I have a suffi- cient apology for not disturbing the almost universally adopted name of Catops. Latreille himself appears at first only to have applied his name to one section of the genus. This appears from his ‘ Histoire Naturelle des Crustacés et des Insectes,’ where in speaking of his constituting the genus, he says, “ Its appearance, says Geoffroy, resembles that of the Mordelle, that is to say, it has long legs with which it walks as if it limped. It is from that character that I have taken my generic denomination: Cholevain Greek means ‘lame.’” The long legs here referred to apply to the first section of the genus, which was subsequently erected into a separate genus by Stephens, and may, I think, be properly maintained as a subgenus, to which Latreille’s name may be restricted. | :
x Royal Physical Society. 75
The number of species at first described was small. Latreille in his ‘ Hist. Nat.’ only describes three, and in his ‘Genera Crustaceorum et Insectorum,’ published in 1807, he describes five. He there breaks the genus into two groups, one corre- sponding to the subgenus Choleva, of which he describes the species agilis and angustatus, auct., and the other including the rest of the genus.
Gyllenhal in 1808 published six species in the first volume of his ‘ Insecta Suecica.’
It is unnecessary to enter into any examination of the syno- nymy of the species described by these authors. Their descrip- tions are for the most part too vague and applicable to too many species subsequently described to allow us to rely greatly upon them. Gyllenhal in his 4th volume, which was not published till 1827, acknowledges that in his 1st volume he had included five different species under one name.
Mr. Spence was the first author who brought the genus into something like order.
In his Monograph (published in the Linnean Society’s Transactions in 1815) he divided the genus into three main sections, dependent upon the antenne being filiform or clavate, the posterior angles of the thorax obtuse or acute, and the elytra striate or not striate; the dilatation or non-dilatation of the first article of the middle tarsi in the males was also made a subordinate character. Of these, the first and last are the only ones which have been adopted as sectional characters by subsequent authors; but the form of the hinder angles of the thorax, although not a good sectional character by itself, will, I think, if taken in conjunction with the base of the elytra, be found to furnish good characters for natural subdivision. Mr. Spence groups his species under the above sectional characters (to each of which I shall attach the synonym now most in use) as follows, viz. :—
* Antenne subfiliform ; posterior angles of thorax obtuse (=Sub- gen. Choleva, Steph.).
C. oblonga=angustata, Fab., Krich. C. agilis=agilis, Ul., Erich.
** Antenne clavate ; posterior angles of thorax acute ; elytra for the most part striated (=Subgen. Catops, Steph.). (Anterior thighs for the most part thickened at the apex in the males, and first article of middle tarsi dilated.)
a. Basal margin of thorax excised near the angles.
C. nigricans = nigricans, Erich. 12
*
76 Proceedings of the C. sericea=fuscus, Panz., Erich.* Ciristis |= ? C. festinans{ = ——? (possibly grandicollis, Kvich.).
b. Thorax with the basal margin straight near the angles.
C. chrysomeloides = chrysomeloides, Panz., Lat., Sturm.
C. Leachi§ =tristis, Erich.
C. Kirbii|| =rotundicollis, Kellner.
C. Marshami7| = ? (either morio, Erich. or nigrita, Erich.} C. dissimulator** = ? (probably morio, Erich.)
* Erichson, and after him Kraatz, give C. picipes, Fab., as the synonym of Spence’s sericea, but I think this is a mistake. The description better accords with fuscus, and J beheve that picipes has not yet been found in Britain. I recorded it in my ‘ Catalogue of Scottish Coleoptera’ as found by myself in Seotland, but I am now satisfied that the specimen on which I relied was only a large variety of nigricans. If KErichson formed his opi- nion of the synonymy from not finding any other probable representative of picipes among Spence’s species, the circumstance of its not being British explains how this may be. [If he judged from Spence’s description, he may have been misled by the commencing words used by Spenee, “ Body broader and more cenvex than im its eongeners,” which he might apply to picipes, which is the largest species in the genus; and by Spence’s next words, “ shorter than the preceding,” viz. nigricans, he might have sup- posed him to mean less elongate in form, which picipes is, although cer- tainly not actually shorter—it beimg longer. The only other resemblance to picipes is the black elytra; but Paykull’s description of his C. sericeus, to which Spence refers as in all other respects identical with his, corrects this incongruity, for Paykull states the elytra of his species to be obscure tes- taceous. In Siephens’s collection sericea is represented by a pale variety of chrysomeloides. .
+ No species has puzzled British entomologists more to identify