38 The Irish Naturalist. February, 
is hardly necessary to insist on the value in certain lines of research of 
microscopic characters of this kind, provided alwa3^s, that their con- 
stancy has been well established. 
D. M'Ardle exhibited specimens of Prionolohus Turneri, one of the 
most curious of the minute leafy Hepaticae, possessing traits of character 
bordering on several sub-genera. The fresh specimens were in fruit, 
and the leaves and stems showed the cell -structure which is very delicate, 
beautifully guttulate, the walls and angles thickened. The leaves are in 
two rows, bilobed, the whole margins irregularly spinosely dentate, and 
often doubly so. The perianth projects beyond the bracts, of which 
there are from one to three pairs, the innermost twice the size of the 
leaves ; it is composed of a single layer of cells except at the base and 
angles where there are two layers ; the mouth is closely ciliolate. The 
calyptra is very fragile, and the oval capsule was burst open to show the 
chocolate-coloured spores and bispiral elaters of the same colour. The 
first notice we have of the plant being found in Ireland, is given in Sir 
William Hooker's "British Jungermanniae" (where there is an excellent 
figure and description at tab. 29), found on a shady bank of a mountain 
rivulet, near Ban try, Co. Cork, by Miss Hutchins, and he writes — " 1 
cannot promise myself a more grateful task than that of dedicating a 
small but elegant species to Dawson Turner, Esq." The date of Miss 
Hutchins collecting the plant would be about 181 1, and no specimens 
were found in any part of Ireland during the long interval of sixty -two 
years, until Professor Lindberg, of Helsingfors, found a small quantity 
on a wet sandy bank at Cromaglown, Killarney, in 1873, and once, again 
it has been found by the exhibitor luxuriating in the County Wicklow, in 
October, 19 12, after an interval of thirty-nine years, in a new station 
far from its home in the south-west. In England it is very rare, and has 
been reported from Sussex and Warwick; in W^ales from Dolgelly ; also in 
Guernsey, France, the Canary Islands, N. Africa, and the coast counties 
of California. 
J. N. Halbert exhibited an Oribatid mite Hypocthojihts mfuhts, 
Koch, found amongst moss collected in County Maj^o. It is the only 
species of the genus known to occur in Ireland, but has not been previously 
recorded. The species is remarkable for its bright red colouring, the 
division of the abdomen into two nearly equal parts, and the beautifully 
pectinate stigmatic organs. It was supposed at one time to represent 
an immature form (nymph) but this has been proved erroneous by A. D. 
Michael, who has bred larvae from ripe eggs obtained from these mites. 
A few of the Irish specimens were observed to contain large-sized eggs 
BELFAST NATURALISTS' FIELD CLUB. 
November 27. — Geological Section. — Microscopic Exhibits and 
Demonstrations. W. J. C. Tomlinson, Chairman of the Section, presided. 
Mr. Tomlinson' s exhibit consisted of a series of microscopical sections 
of volcanic rocks of acid type, including rhyolites from Tardree, Temple- 
patrick, Ballycloughan, Cloughwater, and Orritor quarry, west of 
