Societies and Academies

Abstract

LONDON. Zoological Society, May 17.—Prof. W. H. Flower, F.R.S., President, in the chair.—The President read some extracts from a letter which he had received from Dr. Emm Pasha, dated Wadelai, November 3, relating to some skulls of the Chimpanzee from Monbottu, to some portions of the skeleton of individuals of the Akka tribe, and to some other objects of natural history which he had forwarded (viâ Uganda) to the British Museum of Natural History.—Mr. A. Thomson exhibited some specimens of a rare Papilio (Papilio porthaon) from Delagoa Bay, reared in the Society's Gardens.—Prof. Howes exhibited a drawing of a head of Palinurus penicillatus, received from M, A. Milne-Edwards, and remarked on the assumption of antenniform characters by the left ophthalmite shown in this specimen.—A paper was read by Mr. W. F. Kirby, Assistant in the Zoological Department, British Museum, entitled “A Revision of the Sub-family Libettulinœ, with descriptions of new Genera and Species.” The last compendium of this group was published by Dr. Brauer in 1868, in which forty genera were admitted. Mr. Kirby now raised the number to eighty-eight, all fully tabulated and described in his paper, which likewise included descriptions of fifty-two new species. Mr. Kirby gave a short sketch of the characters of the Libelluiinœ, and more especially of the neuration, which he considered to be of primary importance.—Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe read the third part of his series of notes on the Hume Collection of Birds, which related to Syrnium maingayi, Hume, and to the various specimens of this Owl in the British Museum.—A communication was read from Mr. A. Smith Woodward, on the presence of a canal-system, evidently sensory, in the shields of Pteraspidian fishes. Mr. Woodward described a specimen which seemed to prove that the series of small pits or depressions upon the shields of these ancient fishes, observed by Prof. Ray Lankester, are really the openings of an extensive canal-system traversing the middle layer of the shield.—A second communication from Mr. A. Smith Woodward contained some notes on the “lateral line” of Squaloraja, in which it was shown that the “lateral line” of this extinct Liassic Selachian was an open groove supported, as in the Chimæroids, by a series of minute ring-like calcifications.