8o The Irish Naturalist. 



May i8th. — At this meeting, Mr. G. H. Carpenter gave a paper on the 

 Pycnogonida collected in Torres Straits, by Prof. Haddon. 



Mr. H. H. Dixon gave a paper on the method of walking among some 

 of the Arthropoda. By means of instantaneous photographs, Mr. Dixon 

 has investigated the walking of several insects and spiders. He finds 

 that the limbs move together in diagonal sets ; in insects the first and 

 third legs on one side move with the second on the other; in spiders the 

 first and third on one side with the second and fourth on the other. 

 The antenna of an insect is moved with the first leg on the same side. 

 In larvae, however, as well as in the thysanure Tovwcerus, the limbs on 

 opposite sides move together; this is of great interest, considering that 

 the Thysanura are believed to represent the ancestral type of insect. 

 Some spiders appear to use their first pair of legs as tactile organs ; this 

 seems to show the origin of the structural modification of this pair of 

 limbs in the Pedipalpi. The three limbs of the insect, or the four of 

 the spider, are not moved all together; in some cases the hinder, and in 

 others the foremost being first raised from the ground. 



NOTES. 



BOTANY. 



Ancient Forests of IreI/AND. — Will some one of the contributors to 

 the Ii-ish Naturalist kindly explain the climatic conditions under which 

 the ancient extinct forests of Ireland flourished, and also state how long 

 since they perished } I think it would be interesting to know why it is 

 that the name, in Irish, of the fir, of which tree the forests chiefly con- 

 sisted, is not used, so far as I know, in the names of Irish places, while 

 the names of the ash, the oak, the birch, the elm, the 3^ew, etc., are used. 

 Is the explanation this — that the fir forests perished long before the 

 country w^as inhabited by the people who gave the present names to the 

 towndlands .'* The fir stumps generally rest on the top of the glacial 

 gravel, and at the bottom of the present bogs. I know places here where 

 the stumps are laid bare by the sea, and where the bed on which they 

 grew is matted with their interlacing roots. The hardiest shrub could 

 scarcely be got to keep alive now in that situation. In one of the fir 

 stumps I counted up to eighty rings. The bark in many instances is 

 well preserved. — O. Fallan, Ardara, Co. Donegal. 



Fi,ORA OF THE Arran ISI.ANDS. — To the Journal of Botany for June, 

 Messrs. J. B. Nowers and J. G. Wells, contribute a short paper on this 

 subject, being the result of a stay of a fortnight on the island in June, 

 1890. They add forty-one species to the known flora, of which the rarer 

 are Erodium niaritinium, Trifolium striatum, Cuscuta epithyiman, Melampyruvi 

 pratense var. latifolium, Ophrys apifera, Typha latifolia var. media, Botrychiuni 

 lunaria. Ten of the species are additions to the flora of district VI 

 of "Cybele Hibernica." They record the appearance on all three islands 

 oi Senebicra didyma, a plant not observed by Dr. Wright or Mr. Hart on 

 the occasion of their visits, and which is apparently replacing >S. cornopus, 

 and a valuable confirmation of an old record has been made by their re- 

 discovery of Astragallus /lypoglottis in its only Irish station, where it had 

 not been seen since 1834. 



MOSSES. 



Hypnum filicinum var. vallisclansse, Brid. in Irei<and. — Among 

 some mosses that I received at the beginning of May from Geashill, 

 King's County, I discovered one that I am not aware of having hitherto 



