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before the Committee as to the further utilisation of the gossip nights, and 

 suggestions had been made as to the conducting of some kind of class in- 

 struction on those occasions. The committee had always been very careful 

 not to interfere in any way with the informality and freedom of those meet- 

 ings, and the subject had, therefore, been rather difficult to deal with; but a 

 sub-committee had been appointed to consider the whole question, under in- 

 structions that if the idea could be carried out without interference with the 

 ordinary procedure, it would meet with approval. This sub-committee had 

 unanimously recommended that the experiment should be tried, and the 

 committee had agreed to do so. At the next gossip night, therefore, one of 

 the " Bays" in the room would be occupied by a member of the committee, 

 who would give a brief description of the theory and construction of the 

 microscope, to all who chose to attend to listen. The committee would have 

 this matter under strict supervision, in order that the freedom of the 

 members on those occasions should not be in any way interfered with. 



Mr. Ingpen said he had a short communication to make, arising out of 

 Dr. Edmunds' paper, read at their last meeting, with reference to his method 

 of mounting test objects. This method was so simple and so good that it 

 was worth drawing attention to it. Dr. Edmunds took a thin slip of cedar 

 wood, 3in. long and If wide, and cut a round hole through the middle li in. 

 in diameter. Over this hole he pasted a piece of the thinnest bank post paper, 

 having a fin. hole punched in it. The object was then placed between two 

 pieces of thin glass, cemented together, and these were cemented to the 

 paper. The object was thus mounted between pieces of glass, so thin, 

 that it could be reversed and viewed from either side equally well, and the 

 under side admitted of the use of the immersion paraboloid, whilst the paper 

 being elastic, formed as complete a protection to the objective as even a 

 " Stephenson's safety stage." 



Mr S. J. Mclntire called the attention of the meeting to some larvae of 

 the cat flea, which he had brought for exhibition that evening. Having 

 shaken out upon a newspaper the basket which his cat and her family had 

 occupied, he found, amongst other things, an immense number of the larvaa 

 of the flea, as well as numerous eggs. The eggs were small, pearly objects, 

 and very pretty under the microscope ; and the larvae were white at first, 

 with a few hairs on them, and divided into 13 segments. The food of the 

 larvae consisted of the excrement of the flea ; in due course the larvae 

 entered the crysalis state, and finally changed into the perfect insect. There 

 was a paper upon the subject in " Science Gossip'' for 1865,* which might, 

 perhaps, be forgotten by those present 5 he, therefore, thought it might be 

 of interest to bring the subject again before them. The best objective for 

 the examination of the larvae was a 3in. 



Mr. J. G. Waller read a paper " On a new British Sponge of the Genus 

 Microciona, for which he proposed the name of M. bihamigera. The subjecb 

 was illustrated by diagrams, and by a specimen of the new species. 



Mr Chas. Stewart, at the request of the President, gave an interesting des- 

 cription of the characteristics of sponges generally, in the course of which 



* See " Science Gossip," Vol. i., p. 278, aud Vol. iii.,p. 47. 



