48 The Irish Naturalist. [Feb., 



Whether these bodies are organs of smell or sound, Mr. Russell leaves 

 to the judgment of those who know more about the matter than he 

 does, to decide. 



December 17th.— The Club met at the house of Dr. McWeeney, who 

 showed Widal's method of diagnosing typhoid fever. The blood or 

 serum of the patient is mingled with a pure living cultivation of 

 Bacillus typhosus. Should the case be one of typhoid the bacilli quickly 

 lose their motility and become agglomerated. If the disease be other 

 than typhoid, or should the blood be derived from a healthy person, the 

 active movements of the bacilli are not interfered with and agglutination 

 does not occur. Bacilli other than typhoid fail to give the reaction with 

 typhoid blood. These points were successively demonstrated by means 

 of serum of a typhoid patient contained in a capillary tube and cultures 

 of B. typhosus and B. pyocyaneus in broth. The test seemed likely to 

 become one of the most valuable methods of diagnosing typhoid. 



Prof. C01.E showed a rock-section given to him by Prof J. W. Judd, 

 cut from a specimen collected on Rockall by Capt. Hoskyns in 1S63. 

 The rock from this remote Atlantic islet was described by Prof Judd in 

 a paper read before the Royal Irish Academy in November, 1896. 



Mr. Greenwood Pim showed an alga, Nodularia Harveyana, growing 

 on a Irving and healthy palm leaf in the Trinity College Gardens. The 

 very unusual nidus and the velvety appearance to the naked eye induced 

 the exhibitor at first to regard it as a black mould resembling Sporoschisma. 



Prof T. Johnson showed a preparation of Monoblepharis insignis^ R. 

 Thaxter, an aquatic fungus found by Prof Thaxter, to whom the exhibitor 

 was indebted for the slide, on submerged twigs in ponds and ditches in 

 Massachiisetts and Maine. Monoblepharis is remarkable as being the only 

 fnngus possessing motile male organs or antherozoids, uniciliate and 

 half the size of the biciliate zoospores. Thaxter's illustrations {Botanical 

 Gazette, 8th Oct., 1895), were shown. Monoblepharis is allied to the genus 

 Saprolegnia, one species of which is the salmon-disease fungus. 



Mr. McARDiyE exhibited a specimen oi Lejeunea Holtii, Spruce, which 

 was gathered on shady rocks below Tore Waterfall, Killarney, by Mr. G. 

 A. Holt, of Manchester, in 1885. The plant resembles L. Jlava, Swartz, 

 but differs from every other European Lejeunea in the perianths being 

 borne on short branchlets which normally put forth no sub-floral inno- 

 vations, such as more or less exist in all our other species. The speci- 

 men exhibited showed perianths ; and the pale reddish tinge of the 

 foliage, which is remarkable, and is not seen in any other species, was to 

 be observed. The re-discovery would be of interest and botanical im- 

 portance; it has not been found amongst the numerous gatherings 

 made by Mr. McArdle, or by any person that he is aware of, since 1S85. 



Dr. C. Herbert Hurst exhibited preparations illustrating the struc- 

 ture of the larval gnat. 



Mr. A. VauGHAN JE^fNINGS showed a preparation made by Mr.Coppen 

 Jones, F.t.S., of Davos Platz, showing the branched or mycelial stage of 

 the organism causing tuberculosis. It is now being recognized by 

 bacteriologists that the so-called Tubercle Bacillus may be only a stage 



