THE society's NOTE-BOOKS. 55 



cricket's mouth, it is interesting to observe the way the tongue is 

 folded up and put away. I think the capillary tubes are like those 

 of a fly's tongue. But in Wood's •' Common Objects of the Micro- 

 scope," it is said that the triangular hues in the tube are formed 

 by triangular plates instead of rings. My idea is that the liquid 

 food of such insects as flies must be sucked up by the tongue, 

 and probably tasted by means of these tubes. I do not think the 

 fluid goes up the tubes. W. Locock. 



Cricket's Tongue.— This specimen shows its 430 springs (for 

 such I take them to be) clearly ; at the same time it gives no idea 

 of its natural appearance. A. Nicholson. 



Tongue of Cricket.— Replying to the above query of Mr. H. 

 M. J. Underhill, I am able to say from my own observation that 

 this is the true to?igue of the cricket, a fleshy organ which lies 

 within the labium, and is, as Westwood remarks, p. 441, " quadri- 

 lobed, the two middle lobes being very slender, and the two 

 external ones broader and pilose, articulated both at and near the 

 base." I give a drawing of his figure of the labium, together with 

 one illustrating the details shown by the sUde. The organ cer- 

 tainly calls to mind the membranous, channelled lobes which 

 terminate the proboscis of the MuscidcB, and I think it must have 

 ' a similar function. If so, we may remark how correspondence of 

 parts in different insects involves no necessary correspondence of 

 function, for the ofiice which in the fly devolves upon the 

 expanded extremity of the labium is in the cricket assumed by the 

 tongue — an organ whose homologue in the former insect is a 

 lancet-like, tubular organ of totally different appearance and use. 

 I have given two small drawings of the channels as seen with a 

 quarter-inch object-glass, one taken near their finer extremities and 

 the other from one of their main trunks. A. Hammond. 



Leaflet of Aspidium (PI. VI., Fig. 5).— The organs of 

 reproduction (sori) on the under surface of the fronds of ferns are 

 either naked or covered with a delicate membrane (indusium). In 

 Aspidium the indusium covers the sori like a cap, which splits 

 round the edge when the sori are ripe. The sori are made up of 

 numerous oval bodies (sporangia), composed of brownish cells, 

 one of which has thick walls and forms a ring (annulus) round 

 the edge of the sporangium. When ripe, the annulus splits, the 

 spores in the sporangium shoot out, and begin to germinate, 

 putting forth a tubular prolongation (hypha), develop a leafy 

 expansion (prothallus), on the under surface of which the sexual 

 organs — Antheridia (male), Archegonia (female) — make their 

 appearance. H. M. Klaassen. 



