PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 533 



tents, and expressing the opinion that this communication would be^an 

 important addition to our knowledge of microscopic fungi. 



Mr. A. W. Bennett said he was particularly glad to have this paper 

 offered to the Society by Miss Smith, as it was one of a kind of which 

 there had been too few of late years in the Transactions of the Society. 

 There was one special point with regard to parasitic fungi which he 

 thought was worth calling special attention to, as it might prove to be 

 one of considerable practical importance — and that was as to the culti- 

 vation of fungus parasites on certain insects. It had been proposed to 

 do this on the Continent, and also in Australia and America, with a view 

 to get rid of insect pests — locusts and others ; and if efforts in this 

 direction were successful, they might be the means of producing very 

 beneficial economic results. 



The thanks of the Society were voted to Mr. Stringer and to Miss 

 A. L. Smith for their communications. 



The President having requested Mr. Karop to occupy the chair pro 

 fern., read a paper and gave a lantern demonstration "On the Structure 

 of some Palasozoic Plants." In the course of his remarks he said that 

 the intelligent study of Palaeozoic plants was not yet a century old ; for 

 although their presence had long been recognised, they appeared to have 

 been regarded simply as freaks of nature — Sternberg in Germany in 1820, 

 Brongniart in France in 1822, and Lindley and Hutton in England in 

 1831, must be regarded as the fathers of Paleobotany ; they were fol- 

 lowed by a host of others. The importance of fossils was first recog- 

 nised by Wm. Smith, who observed that strata could be identified by 

 the organised fossils found in them. He published this important fact 

 in 1816, and thus laid the basis for what was known as strati graphical 

 geology. 



The great majority of the plants preserved as fossils are found in 

 these shales, which were the mud deposits of ancient lakes and rivers. 

 The plants have been hermetically sealed in these shales, and, although 

 the tissues have been converted into carbon, the form and venation of the 

 leaves, and in some few cases the aspect of the fruits, have been preserved. 

 The most important information as to these extinct floras has however 

 been obtained from specimens in which the tissues have been replaced by 

 minerals dissolved in the strata enclosing them. These often exhibit 

 the most delicate structures, when thin sections properly prepared and 

 mounted are examined under the Microscope ; as for example, sections 

 of the " Coal balls " of Halifax, of vegetable remains from King's Cliff, 

 near Burntisland, and of the charred carboniferous forests in Arran. 

 He had arranged for the lantern sections of plants from the Carboniferous 

 system, and would show these on the screen ; but before doing so wished 

 to point out to what group of the vegetable kingdom they belong. 

 The cellular plants, with very few exceptions, have been lost ; they 

 quickly decayed, and though they doubtless contributed a large propor- 

 tion of the vegetable carbon found in the older rocks, they have left no 

 structure, no indication of external form by which they could be recog- 

 nised. Sir Wm. Dawson found specimens of a remarkable stem in the 

 lower Devonian rocks of Canada, a description of which he published 

 under the name of Prototaxites, considering it to be a representative of 



