24 DUBLIN UNIVERSITY 



has appeared elsewhere. The attention of the Association was especially- 

 directed to the structure of the air-sacs, the pancreas, and its ducts, which 

 open by a common orifice below the pyloric valve, the two-auricled heart, 

 and, finally, the attachment of the anterior limb as an appendage to the 

 scapular arch, formed by the articulation of the scapula with the occiput 

 above, and completed below by the coracoid bones meeting in front of 

 the heart. Dr. M'Donnell also informed the meeting that he had lately 

 learned that the Lepidosiren exists in the rivers of Natal, as well as in 

 the marshes of Quillimane, as shown by Peters. 



The Meeting then adjourned to February 17, 1860. 



FRIDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 17, 1860. 



Professor W. H. Harvey, M. D., M. K. I. A., F. L. S., F. E. S., Presi- 

 dent, in the Chair. 



The Minutes of last Meeting having been read, were approved of, and 

 signed by the President. 



The President read a paper, entitled, " A Guess as to the probable 

 origin of the Human Animal, considered by the light of Mr. Darwin's 

 Theory of Natural Selection, and in opposition to Lamarck's notion of a 

 Monkey Parentage." 



The following paper, by Charles Farran, M. D., was read : — 



ON ADAMSIA MACULATA. 



Adamsia maculata, from its inhabiting deep water, is not at all so 

 often seen as the more littoral species of the various genera of Zoantharia ; 

 and, so far as I am aware, it has been but once recorded as Irish, — namely, 

 in the fourth volume of Thompson's "Natural History of Ireland," where 

 the following notice occurs:* — "This extremely beautiful species was 

 taken by dredging in Strangford Lough, in January, 1835, by Mr. Hynd- 

 man and myself, and has subsequently occurred commonly to us there 

 and in Belfast Bay : to Bulla {scaphander) lignaria, as well as to the 



* Dr. E. Perceval Wright records its occurrence on the west coast, vide " Proceed- 

 ings," vol. i., p. 183. In the list there given, the Waterford locality was, by a strange over- 

 sight, omitted. 



