PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY AND AFFILIATED 



SOCIETIES 



THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON 



The 533d meeting of the Society was held at the Cosmos Club, 

 Saturday, January 9, 1915, with President Bartsch in the chair. 

 About 40 members were present. Waldo Schmitt of the U. S. National 

 Museum was elected to active membership. 



Under the heading Brief Notes and Exhibition of Specimens L. 0. 

 Howard made remarks on the meetings held at Philadelphia during 

 convocation week. Dr. Pilsbry discussed certain aspects of the Hawai- 

 ian land shell problem, stating that early collecting was done in the 

 valleys, but that recent work showed the chief home of species to be 

 on the ridges. The distribution of forms occurred in groups and there 

 were many instances of Mendelian inheritance between different forms 

 carried out on a large natural scale. 



The first paper on the regular program was by Wm. Palmer: An 

 unknown fossil. Mr. Palmer exhibited the specimen from the Calvert 

 Cliffs of Chesapeake Bay and hoped members would express views as 

 to its nature. His own view was that it might represent the lower 

 jaw of an unknown turtle. From same locality other fossils were 

 shown that had previously proved very difficult to identify. Mr. 

 Palmer's communication was discussed by Professor Hay. 



The second paper was by Professor Hay: An albino terrapin. The 

 unique specimen was exhibited; it was hatched near Beaufort, N. C; 

 an attempt was made to raise it, but it lived only a few months. 

 Professor Hay took occasion to show excellent lantern slides of cer- 

 tain interesting crustaceans especially of Limnoria lignoriim,, a wood 

 boring Isopod, and of Xylotria, a wood boring mollusk. The com- 

 munication was discussed by Messrs. Bartsch, Wilcox, Palmer, 

 ■ Smith, and Hopkins, and by Miss Rathbun. 



The last communication was by M. W. Lyon Jr.: Notes on the 

 physiology of bats. The speaker stated that little was known of the 

 exact physiology of bats, but discussed the subject from the broad 

 standpoint of their physiology of locomotion, of food, of adaptation, 

 and of special senses. The need of careful experiments on use of, and 

 modern histological work on structure of noseleaves was pointed out. 

 The paper was discussed by Messrs. Howard, Bishop, Hunter, Wm. 

 Palmer and Stiles; Mr. Bishop giving an account of a bat roost near 

 San Antonio, Texas, erected with the idea that bats would consume 

 large numbers of malarial mosquitoes; Mr. Hunter stating that an 

 examination of stomach contents of bats showed that the food of 

 Nytinomus mexicanus consisted of 95 per cent moths, the rest being 

 carabid beetles, hymenopterous insects, and a few crane flies — the 

 only Diptera found, no mosquitoes being observed. 



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