33G PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



meeting on the wing of the bird. Dr Whitaker and the Chairman 

 made some remarks on this specimen. 



Mr Duncan M'Lellan, Superintendent of Parks, forwarded a 

 vessel, filled from a ditch in Cathcart Parish, which so swarmed 

 with red worms that it contained more worms than mud. Dr 

 Young expressed his belief that they were one stage of develop- 

 ment of some higher form, these worms appearing and disappearing 

 from a district several times during a season. 



Mr James Lumsden exhibited a very fine specimen of a fossil 

 Nautilus (iV. ingens), from the Carboniferous strata of North 

 Ayrshire, upon which Mr John Young made some remarks, and 

 pointed out the range of the genus throughout the various fossili- 

 ferous strata. 



Mr Peter Cameron, jun., exhibited specimens oi Nematus conso- 

 brinus, a saw-fly, bred from the gooseberry, and found often in 

 company with N. rihessi, the common gooseberry pest, which it 

 very closely resembles. This species is an addition to the British 

 fauna, as hitherto it has only been found in Holland. Mr Cameron 

 also exhibited specimens of another species of Nematus, bred from 

 pea-shaped green galls found on Salix herbacea on the Breadalbane 

 mountains, at an elevation of from 3000 to 4000 feet, and referred 

 to the difficulty of determining species in this extensive genus. 

 The larva differs from its congeners in having the skin beset with 

 small dots or tubercles. The specific name is still uncertain. 



PAPER READ. 



On the Post-tertiary Clay-beds at Houston. By Mr James Coutts. 



The Clyde post-tertiary beds have long been famous for the 

 variety and abundance of the Arctic shells found in them. It was 

 in these dej^osits that the evidence of a glacial fauna was first traced 

 by the late Mr Smith of Jordanhill. At Dalmuir, Kyles of Bute, 

 and other places, he found many shells, wliich he could not find 

 by dredging to be living at the present time in the Firth of Clyde, 

 and which he therefore concluded to be extinct. After many 

 dredging cruises, in which ho was assisted by the late G. B. 

 Sowerby and others, he found that the molluscs which he thought 

 extinct still lived in northern seas; and the idea was therefore 

 suggested that they represented a time when the climate of 

 Scotland was as severe as that which now prevails in Greenland 

 or Spitzbergen. Since these facts were clearly established by Mr 



