124 



Mr. Cole, in reply to the President, said he would rather not say anything 

 about the objects he had brought ; they were placed upon the table for ex- 

 animation, and he would leave them to speak for themselves. 



A paper by Mr. James Fullagar — " On the development of Actinophrys 

 sol" was read by the Secretary. The subject was illustrated by numerous 

 diagrams, enlarged from drawings prepared with great care as plates for the 

 Journal. The paper was supplemented by a letter upou the subject, ad- 

 dressed to Mr. Curties. 



The President expressed his sense of the value of Mr. Fullagar' s paper, 

 which he thought set a good example to all in the matter of watching 

 objects of this kind during the process of development. 



The Secretary thought the whole subject was extremely interesting, and 

 of the greatest importance, if it could be proved that Amoeba and 

 Actinophrys were really only stages of one and the same organism, and that 

 Actinophrys underwent encystment. Dr. Cooke had divided naturalists 

 into two classes, " Lumpers" and " Splitters," according to their respective 

 tendencies to reduce or increase the number of species, and he confessed 

 that in this matter he rather inclined towards the " Lumpers," and had 

 always thought it somewhat rash to make so many sjDecies of Amoeba. Cer- 

 tainly Mr. Fullagar had gone far to trace a complete cycle of changes in 

 Actinophrys. On reading up the subject he had found many observations 

 which confirmed portions of Mr. Fullagar's paper, but he did not know of a 

 complete cycle having been worked out. What Messrs. Dallinger and Drys- 

 dale had done in the case of the monads, under exceptional circumstances, 

 could not, perhaps, be done by many others, but similar observations to 

 those of Mr. Fullagar must lead to important results as to the knowledge of 

 the life history of those creatures. 



The President said, with regard to the question of Amoeba and Amoeboid 

 forms, he had for a long time been making observations of them, and he 

 had found some with, and some without vacuoles. He had regarded 

 Amoeba commune as the type ; and he had found that the one which had a 

 vacuole did undergo changes. The vacuole became eventually lined with a 

 membrane, then became a contractile vesicle, and then protruded pseudopodia 

 proper (not the common processes). They knew there were instances in 

 which ciliated corpuscles were fouud to exist, as in the case of the sponge 

 Bowerbanlria, but in all cases these seemed to degenerate. He thought 

 what Mr. Fullagar had described was certainly the development of an 

 Amoeboid form, but not that of an Amoeba. Mr. Fullagar well deserved 

 their thanks for his observations, as tending to reduce the number of species, 

 and also for his elaborate and interesting paper. 



A vote of thanks to Mr. Fullagar was then put to the meeting by the 

 President, and unanimously carried. 



Mr. T. C. White said he had for distribution amongst the members a 

 quantity of Xylaria polymorpha, a fungus found growing upon the roots of 

 an acacia, and which made beautiful sections. It had been left in his charge 

 by Mr. C. F. White. 



The meetings and excursions for the ensuing mouth were then announced 



