454 Linnaan Society. 



which they adhere with great tenacity, and especially to the scarious 

 margins of the abortive sheath annuli. This peculiarity was ob- 

 served in numerous instances, but other cases occurred in which the 

 surface of the tubers presented no such appearance. 



February 16. — The Lord Bishop of Norwich, President, in the Chair. 



Read an extract from a letter addressed by Captain Sir E. Home, 

 Bart., R.N., to R. Brown, Esq., V.P.L.S., giving an account of the 

 measurement of some of the largest of the New Zealand and Norfolk 

 Island Pines. With reference to the former Sir E. Home quotes from 

 the Journal of Mr. Saddler, Master R.N., who was sent to New Zea- 

 land in 1833-4 in command of the Buffalo Store-ship to procure spars 

 for the Navy. The tree which he describes was in a forest near 

 Wangaroa, some miles north of the Bay of Islands. Mr. Saddler 

 says, " On 16th (May 1834) I went to examine a Kauri tree [Dam- 

 mara australis. Lamb.] which Mr. Betts the purveyor in his search 

 through the forest had discovered a few days previous ; it is situated 

 about two miles from the river on the steep bank of a ravine. It 

 appeared perfectly sound and healthy, and measured forty-three feet 

 nine inches in circumference, and sixty feet high without a branch. 

 Its head then spread out into forty-one principal branches, some of 

 which were four feet through. It is more than double the size of 

 any tree I have before seen in this country." Sir E. Home adds, 

 that the largest tree of this species that he saw was only eighteen 

 feet eight inches in circumference ; but that in Norfolk Island he had 

 measured the largest tree [of Araucaria excelsa, Sol.] known to be 

 upon the island and had found it to be 187 feet high, the girth at four 

 feet from the ground fifty-four feet, and at twenty feet from the 

 ground fifty-one feet. This tree is hollow for sixteen feet above the 

 ground, but is in good health. 



Read also a memoir ** On the Structure and Comparative Phy- 

 siology of Chiton and Chitonellus." By Lovell Reeve, Esq., F.L.S. 

 &c. &c. 



Mr. Reeve commences his paper by remarking on the paucity of 

 species of Chitonidm known to Lamarck so lately as 1819, and the 

 very large number (amounting to between two and three hundred) 

 now known to inhabit the western coast of South America, the shores 

 of New Holland and New Zealand, and other localities explored by 

 recent voyagers ; and states that he is enabled by the kindness of 

 Mr. Cuming and Capt. Sir Edward Belcher to oflfer a few observa- 

 tions on the structure of Chiton and such remarks on Chitonellus as, 

 in his opinion, will leave no doubt of their claim to generic distinc- 

 tion. He notices the successive additions made to these genera by 

 Mr. Frembly, by Mr. Cuming, by M. Quoy, by Capt. Belcher in the 

 voyages of the Blossom, the Sulphur and the Samarang (and espe- 

 cially in the latter in company with Mr. Arthur Adams), by the Rev. 

 Mr. Hennah, by Dr. DiefFenbach, by Mr. Earl, by Mr. Ronald Gunn, 

 by Mr. Ince, by Dr. Gould, by Mr. Courthony, and by Prof. Edward 

 Forbes and Mr. M'Andrew ; and then enters into an examination of 



