Societies and Academies

Abstract

MANCHESTER. Literary and Philosophical Society, October 1.—Mr. Charles Bailey, president, in the chair.—Mr. W. E. Hoyle exhibited two ethnological specimens from Demerara, formerly in the possession of the Manchester Natural History Society, under the name of “fish-arrows.” They are about 4 feet long, slender, and apparently made from the wall of some hollow reed, with nodes at regular intervals. At one end is a barbed point of wrought iron, the other end being stained a dark brown for abcut four inches. The use of these weapons is somewhat difficult to determine; they are too thin and flexible either shoot from a how or to throw with true aim. Instruments of similar kind have, however, been used for catching fish baiting the barbed end and sticking the other end into the bed ofthe stream among the reeds.—Mr.Cecil P. Hurst sent specimens of Diolis candidissima, Desf., a disappearing British plant, which he collected recently on the sandy bars separating two inland lakes from the sea on the south-eastern coast of county Wexford, Ireland. He described its habitat on the shores Lady's Island Lake and Tacumsin Lake, and on the coast from Carnsore Point westward, and referred to its recorded occurrence in nine of the coinital areas in the South of England, from of which, including the Channel Islands, it has disappeared. It was found very sparingly on the south-western coast Anglesey in the years 1894 and 1896.