Societies and Academies

Abstract

LONDON. Linnean Society, November 3.—W. Carruthers, F.R.S., President, in the chair.—Mr. J. H. Hart, of Trinidad, was elected a Fellow of the Society.—The President called attention to the death-roll since last June meeting, specially deploring the loss of Prof. Julius von Haast, N.Z., Dr. Spencer Baird, U.S., and Prof. Caspary, of Königsberg.—Mr. H. N. Ridley gave an account of his natural history collection in Fernando Noronha. The group of islands in question is in the South Atlantic, 194 miles east of Cape San Roque. The largest is about five miles long and two miles across at broadest part. Although chiefly basaltic, phonolite rocks crop up here and there. The indigenous fauna and flora seem to have been much modified, and in some cases extirpated, by human agency. Of mammals, the cat is reported to have become feral, and rats and mice swarm; Cetacea occasionally frequent the coast. The land-birds comprise a dove, a tyrant, and a greenlet (Virio). Sea-birds are numerous, though apparently less so than in the time of the early voyagers. Among reptiles occurs an Ampbisbæna, a Skink, and a Gecko; turtles also haunt the bays. The absence of batrachians and fresh-water fish is noteworthy. A well-known Brazilian species of butterfly is plentiful. Though insects generally are abundant, there are, notwithstanding, but few species. Two shells (Trochus) show a southern distribution, though other marine forms indicate West Indian relationship. Several interesting plants were got, a Solatium with medicinal properties, a new Erythrium, and flower of the “Burra,” a Euphorbiaceous tree. Of ferns, mosses and hepatics, lichens and fungi, several interesting sorts were collected.—Mr. Geo. Murray exhibited Vallonia ovalis from Bermuda and Grenada; the former sort consisting of a balloon-shaped cell an inch long and two wide. He explained by diagrams the development of V. utricularis, incidentally comparing this with Sciadium.—Prof. Marshall Ward showed specimens and made remarks on the peculiar development of Agaricus (Amillaria) melleus.—Mr. E. A. Heath exhibited examples of fruits of two species of Solarium from Barbados.—A paper was read on the scars occurring on the stem of Dammara robusta, by Mr. S. G. Shattock. He says that the process of disarticulation of the branches is like that by which a leaf or other organ is shed. The parenchy-matous cells across the whole zone of articulation multiply by transverse division, a layer of cork resulting from the formation of this secondary rneristem, and through the distal limits of this, solution of continuity occurs. After this the slender connecting bond of wood is broken across by the weight of the branch or the first trivial violence; this completion of the process being aided, perhaps, by the tension made upon the wood in consequence of the cell-division of the surrounding parenchyma which occurs across its axis. It thus happens that the whole of the parenchymatous system of the stem is closed by cork before the branch is actually shed.—A communication followed, by Messrs. J. G. Baker and C. B. Clarke, on the Ferns of Northern India; it being a supplement to a memoir published in the Society's Transactions.