The hish Naturalist, January, 



DUBLIN MICEOSCOPICAL CLUB. 



November 13. — The Club met at Leiuster House, the President (Prof. 

 Carpenter) in the chair. 



Dr. J. Ai^FRED Scott gave a demonstration on the Lumiere "auto- 

 chrome" process of colour photography. He exhibited under the 

 microscope a portion of a plate prepared for the process, showing the 

 "filter" of coloured starch grains, and displayed a series of finished 

 lantern slides, 



J. N. Halbert exhibited ahydrachnid mite, At urus scaber, P. Kram, 

 found plentifully in moss on stones in the Devil's Glen stream, County 

 Wicklow. This species has not been previously recorded from the 

 British Islands. It occurs in rapidly flowing streams in the mountain 

 districts of Europe, ranging from Norway to Italy. 



F. W. Moore showed young seedlings in various stages of Drosera 

 spathiilata. This species lives in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand 

 and, as the specific name implies, the leaves are spathulate in shape ; 

 they are from two to three inches long, and, owing to the bright colour of 

 the glands with which the upper surface of the leaves are covered, the dense 

 tufts which the plant forms are very attractive. The chief interest in the 

 seedlings lies in the fact that the young leaves are palmately divided up, 

 regular wedges of tissue running into the few scattered glands borne by 

 them. In the older stages the leaves become quite entire, with uninter- 

 rupted margins. 



Dr. G. H. PETlTi'BRiDGE exhibited the potato blight — Phylophthora 

 infestans — grown on tubers of the new potato, Solanuni Connnersonii {y\o\&\.). 

 The tubers concerned were derived from a crop grown in the ordinary 

 way from tubers of the variety imported direct from the raiser. The 

 claim of immunity put forward for this variety is therefore untenable. 

 Two previous exhibits (see /. Nat.^ vol. xvi., pp. 345 and37i), together with 

 this lavSt one, show that (i) the new tubers can easily be inoculated arti- 

 ficially, (2) the foliage of the plants grown from directly imported tubers 

 suffers in Ireland from the blight, (3) the resulting tubers also become 

 affected. 



BELFAST NATURAL HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHICAL 



SOCIETY. 



November 12.— A lecture was given by Joseph R. Fisher, B.L. 

 Subject — " Canada in the Twentieth Century." The paper was illustrated 

 b}' a special series of lantern views. 



December ii. — R. A. Dawson, A.R.C.A., Headmaster, School of Art, 

 Municipal Technical Institute, Belfast, lectured on the subject " Celtic 

 Art, its Development, Characteristics, and Possibilities," illustrated by 

 a special series of lantern views. 



