[ 189 ] 

 XXIII. Proceedings of Learned Societies, 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 



June 8. — A Paper was in part read, entitled " Observations on 

 ±\- the minute structure of the higher forms of Polypi, 

 with observations on their classification." By Arthur Farre, M.B., 

 Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. 

 Communicated by Richard Owen, Esq., F.R.S. 



June 15 The reading of Dr. A. Farre's paper was resumed and 



concluded. 



After a short account of the labours of preceding naturalists in 

 that department of zoology which comprises the various kinds of 

 polypes, and of the different characters on which they have founded 

 the classification of these animals, the author proceeds to the state- 

 ment of his own observations on several species which had not 

 been previously investigated with sufficient minuteness and care. 

 Two of the species described he believes to be entirely new, and he 

 has accordingly given them the names of Boxverbankia densa, and 

 Lagenella repens. The other species which are the subject of the 

 author's investigation, are Vesicularia spinosa, Valkeria cuscuta, 

 Alcyonidium diapkanum, Membranipora pilosa, and Notania lori- 

 culata. 



He then discusses the principles on which the classification of 

 this tribe of zoophytes should be founded, and proposes on these 

 principles to give the name of Ciliobrachiata to the whole group of 

 polypes characterized by the possession of ciliated tentacula, and a 

 free alimentary canal with two orifices : this group again he divides 

 into two subordinate groups, namely, the Hydriform and the Acti- 

 ?tiform, or Zoanthiform polypes. Under the title of Nudibrachiata 

 he proposes to comprehend all those polypes which partake of the 

 nature of the hydra, and whose tentacula are unprovided with cilia, 

 corresponding to the Anthozoa of Ehrenberg. 



"On the Temperature of Insects, and its connexion with the 

 functions of Respiration and Circulation." By George Newport, 

 Esq. Communicated by P. M. Roget, M.D., F.R.S. 



The author states at the commencement of his paper, that, al- 

 though it has been long known that insects living in society, as the 

 bee and the ant, maintain in their habitations a temperature higher 

 than that of the open air, the fact had never yet been established 

 that individual insects of every kind possess a more elevated tem- 

 perature than that of the medium in which they reside, and that in 

 each species the degree of elevation varies in the different stages of 

 their existence. He was first led to study the temperature of in- 

 sects in consequence of the curious results which he had met with 

 in some observations he had himself made, in the autumn of the 

 year 1832, on a species of wild bee in its natural haunts, with a view 

 to ascertain, as had been suggested to him by Dr. Marshall Hall, 

 the relation between the temperature of these insects during their 

 hybernation, and the irritability of their muscular fibre : but the 

 fact of the existence of a higher temperature in individual insects 



