2 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



January 21 si. 

 Vice President Bridges in the Chair. 



Twenty-nine members present. 



The following papers were presented for publication : 



Descriptions of new Plants from Texas, by S. B. Buckley. 



On the uniformity of relative characters between allied species of 

 European and American Trees, by Thomas Meehan. 



Notice of a new species of Hemilepidotus, by Theo. Gill. 



On the subfamily of Argentininae, by Theo. Gill. 



Notes on the Sciaenoids of California, by Theo. Gill. 



Appendix to the Synopsis of the subfamily of Percinae, by Theo. Gill. 



Mr. Cassin gave an account of a flock of crows, lost in a fog whilst 

 passing over the city early on Sunday morning, the 12th inst. 



Mr. Haldeman stated that he had frequently noticed the bald eagle 

 dive for fish in the Susquehanna, when it could not procure its food by 

 robbing the fish hawk. 



Dr. Rogers made some remarks on the influence upon the health of 

 communities from the thawing of snow in the streets by means of salt, 

 exposing what he considered to be the fallacies of the common preju- 

 dices on the subject. 



January 2S(h. 



Vice President Bridges in the Chair. 



Twenty- four members present. 



On report of the respective Committees, the following papers were 

 ordered to be published in the Proceedings : 



Notes on some of the American Ash Trees, (Fraxinus,) with descriptions of new 



Species. 



BY S. B. BUCKLEY. 



The great accuracy of the plates in Michaux's Sylva is admitted by all who 

 have seen both them and the trees whose portions are there represented. 

 That the text contains a few errors is well known, but the figures are true to 

 nature and correctly represent the object described. The wonder is that a 

 work published at that early day, in the infancy of botany, should so well and 

 truthfully describe our forest trees. 



It is supposed by some botanists that the fruit in the plate of Fraxinus 

 americanais that of the green ash, (F. vi r i d i s ,) or that the fruit of these 

 two species of ash has been substituted the one for the other by mistake. The 

 original proof-plates of the Sylva are in the Library of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences at Philadelphia, in which the figure of the white ash differs little 

 from the one in the last edition. Had there been an error, it would have 

 probably been corrected, as several editions of the Sylva passed under the eye 

 of Michaux ; nor does the fruit of the white ash differ from his description of 

 that species. In his account of the green ash, he states that " its seeds are only 

 half as large as those of the white ash, but similar inform ; and also, in describing 

 F. pubescens, he remarks that " its seeds are shorter than those of. am e- 

 r ic an a, but similar inform and arrangement." These statements in the text 

 agree perfectly with his pictures of these species. 



[Jan. 



