18 PKOCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



communities. Jelly-fishes have also been considered as com- 

 pound beings. The question could only be determined, he 

 thought, from a morphological point of view. A gamopeta- 

 lous flower, in which all the petals are united, if we consider 

 it with reference to this fact, has a striking resemblance to 

 the medusa bell, the pistil in the flower being represented by 

 the proboscis in the medusa. Professor Agassiz gave an 

 account of the origin of Eudoxia and Aglaisma from the 

 Diphyes, and pointed out the resemblance of the phenomena 

 to those occurring in the vegetable world. There are thus, he 

 said, dioecious communities, and there are also monoecious 

 communities, among animals, as well as plants ; and he gave 

 instances in illustration. The combinations of the sexes in 

 their arrangement and order of succession along the parent 

 stem were seen to resemble exactly those occurring among 

 plants, while in some instances the order was the reverse of 

 that in the vegetable world, seeming to complete the series, 

 as it were. The conclusion, therefore, to which Professor 

 Agassiz had been led, by these curious zoophyte forms of ani- 

 mal life, was, that, as the animal buds are certainly individ- 

 ual existences, their representatives in the vegetable world, 

 viz. the analogous buds or axes, should likewise be regarded 

 as individuals. 



Dr. T. M. Brewer exhibited some plates of birds' eggs, 

 remarkable for their perfect representation of the originals, 

 which had been obtained by an application of the photo- 

 graphic process. The eggs were first photographed on a very 

 small scale, to do away as much as possible with the aberra- 

 tion of sphericity, and from these photographs a second set 

 was obtained, of the full size of the egg, which were trans- 

 ferred to stone and printed in colors. The result was a most 

 perfect exhibition of the spots and markings of these objects, 

 hitherto so diflicult to delineate. 



