278 



PROCEEDINGS. 



September 22nd, 1871. — Chairman, Dr. Lionel S. Beale, 



F.R.S., &c, President. 



The following donations to the Club were announced : — 



" Land and Water" (weekly) from the Editor. 



" Science Gossip" ... ... ... ... ... the Publisher. 



" Monthly Microscopical Journal " the Publisher. 



"The American Naturalist" in exchange- 



"Flint," a paper by Mr. Hawkins Johnson ... the Author. 



"The Proceedings of the Geologists' Association" the Secretary. 



The thanks of the Club were unanimously voted to the donors. 



Mr. Waller read a paper "On Boring and Burrowing Sponges," illustrating 

 the subject by diagrams. 



The President proposed a vote of thanks to Mr. Waller for his extremely in- 

 teresting paper, feeling sure that all present must have listened to his remarks 

 with great pleasure. 



The vote of thanks was then carried unanimously, and discussion upon the 

 subject was invited. 



Mr. Henry Lee said he was quite sure that everyone present would agree with 

 him in regarding any opinions of so high an authority as Dr. Bowerbank with 

 great reverence ; but with regard to the subject before them, he had, from ob- 

 servations of his own, recently had occasion to mention to the Doctor some 

 doubts which he had, whether the sponge Cliona did not really possess the per- 

 forating powers which had been attributed to it by the old Naturalists. At_ 

 Lyme Regis, in May last, he had found some spat of oysters and "crows," ap- 

 parently about a fortnight old ; the shells were very small— not more than ,'g to 

 | of an inch in diameter — and he saw upon these some small specks, which 

 proved, upon microscopic examination, to be borings, filled with Cliona. He 

 was strongly impressed with the idea that these borings were made by the 

 sponges, because he did not believe that there were any Annelids so small as to 

 make such minute holes so rapidly filled with the sponge. He did not believe in 

 Cliona having any frictional process of boring by the aid of minute grains of 

 sand, which had been alluded to ; he believed the action to be more probably > 

 chemical than mechanical. He had been struck by the appearance of erosion 

 and corrosion in the shells which had been bored, especially when Cliona was 

 found — as it frequently was — in an almost continuous flat layer between the 

 laminae of the shells. He used to think at one time that it was an error to 

 suppose that the borings were made by the sponge, but his more recent observa- 

 tions had led him to conclude that there was at least enough evidence to the 



