Royal Society. 225 



appeared singly in a periodical called the ' Home Friend,' and com- 

 mences with an account of the author's outward voyage and of his 

 journey up the Alabama River to his destination, in the course of 

 which he found opportunities of making numerous observations on the 

 natural history of the country traversed, which are described, as usual 

 with Mr. Gosse, in a pleasant, lively style. Mr. Gosse then gives us a 

 short account of the nature of his scholastic duties, and afterwards a 

 history of his proceedings in the out-of-the-way locality where he 

 took up his abode for seven or eight months, which includes a 

 great many interesting observations on the natural history of the 

 district, and especially on its entomology, described in an agreeable, 

 gossiping manner. Interspersed with these, we find numerous cha- 

 racteristic remarks on the mode of life of the rough-and-ready 

 southern planters amongst whom our author found himself located, 

 their field sports, and their dexterity with the rifle. The institution 

 also comes in for its share of notice, and, as may be expected, is not 

 mentioned with any favour. The little work is illustrated with 

 several nicely executed woodcuts, and is altogether a pleasing con- 

 tribution to the stock of popular Natural History literature. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 



Dec. 15, 1859. Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, Bart., President, in the 



Chair. 



" Note respecting the Circulation of Gasteropodous Mollusca and 

 the supposed Aquiferous Apparatus of the Lamellibranchiata." By 

 M. H. Lacaze Duthiers. 



A memoir upon the aquiferous system and the oviducts of Lamelli- 

 branchiate Mollusks by Messrs. Rolleston and Robertson, was read 

 before the Royal Society at the Meeting on the 3rd of February, 1859. 

 The abstract of this memoir, contained in the ' Annals and Magazine 

 of Natural History,' reached me in the month of July; and I was not 

 a little surprised to find that a structure which I had so elaborately stu- 

 died in the course of my various journeys to the sea-shore, and which 

 I had carefully described in a number of species, was something quite 

 different from what I had imagined it to be. Without entering into 

 minute anatomical details, which would not tend to elucidate the 

 question, I find that Messrs. Rolleston and Robertson consider that 

 the organs, the ducts, and the orifices supposed to be the ovaries or 

 their excretory ducts, are, in fact, nothing but an aquiferous appa- 

 ratus, and that the openings placed on each side of the foot are the 

 excretory orifices of this system. They discover elsewhere the ducts 

 whose office is to convey away the products of the genital glands. 

 The enunciation of an opinion so opposed to what I, in common 

 with many other authors, had maintained, seemed to require a recur- 

 rence to direct observation. But on repeating my examination of 



