PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 533 



Professor Vaney's letter, which did not, unfortunately, arrive in 

 time to be read at the Meeting, may be included here :— 



" Trochodota dunedinemis (Parker) is a Synaptid which seems to be 

 very rare. All the specimens described have been collected in Otago 

 Harbour, New Zealand. The specimen collected by Mr. Allan is 2 cm. 

 in length. Its vermiform body shows at its anterior end a crown of ten 

 tentacles, each with several pairs of lateral digitations. On three _ of 

 .these tentacles there is the reddish-brown spot noted by Parker, which 

 some authors regard as a sensory organ. The skin is very transparent, 

 and contains two kinds of spicules : (1) wheels with six rays, of variable 

 size, the largest about 160 /x in diameter, and (2) sigmoid corpuscles 

 with the terminal points recurved in two different planes." 



Dr. Hebb said that Messrs. Flatters and Garnett, Ltd., had sent 

 several things for exhibition to the Society, one of which was a glycerin- 

 jelly bath ; another was a simple dissecting stand, with a drawer inside, 

 and a fitting for a lens — made to meet a demand for a cheap stand for 

 class use. They had also sent two cabinets for holding slides, one of 

 which was a cardboard case, with loose trays for holding 72 slides ; and 

 the other was made of mahogany, with several deep drawers to hold 

 boxes like the other, with spaces for labels in the front of each drawer. 

 He had used the smaller kind, and had found it very useful. 



Dr. Hebb also exhibited some photomicrographs of Mr. Grayson's 

 rulings, and read a note by Mr. Nelson describing them. 



The President read a paper, " On some Alcyonarians collected by 

 Sir Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition." The specimens shown 

 under Microscopes in the room were collected by Mr. James Murray at 

 Cape Royds and adjacent places. The collection had been made under 

 circumstances of the greatest difficulty, sometimes after cutting through 

 15 feet of ice. The conditions under which the collection was made 

 were described in Part I. of the Reports on the Biological Results of 

 the Expedition, and he wished to congratulate Mr. Murray on its publica- 

 tion. It was not only full of scientific interest, but was also fascinating 

 as a record of fine achievement under extraordinary difficulties. As the 

 specimens had been handed to him by Mr. Murray in the Society's 

 rooms, he thought it was fitting that he should report the result of his 

 investigation of them to the Society. He began to examine the collec- 

 tion with great expectations, hoping that something new would emerge, 

 but his expectations had not been realised. Although the collection 

 included many specimens, there were only four species, all of which had 

 been found before. He had no more to offer than corroborations and 

 amplifications of what previous observers had seen. Of the four species, 

 one (Clamdaria rosea Studer) had been previously obtained from 

 Kerguelen Island ; another (C. chuni Kukenthal) had been dredged 

 from a depth of over 1000 metres from the Indian Ocean, near the 

 equator ; the third {Alcyonitim psessleri May) had been twice previously 

 recorded from the Antarctic ; and the fourth (Ceratoisis delicatula 

 Hickson) was an exquisite colony of extraordinary beauty, originally de- 



