Il6 May, 



DUBLIN MICROSCOPICAL CLUB. 



Febr. 12. — The Club met at Leiuster House. 



Mr. Moore showed flowers of Plenrothallis macroblepharis, a very minute 

 Orchid from New Grenada. This is popularly known as the Gnat 

 Orchid, as the flowers, which are dull grey in colour, hang horizontally 

 from delicate thread-like stalks, and at a distance resemble a group of 

 gnats or midges. Scattered over the sepals are minute blotches of purple 

 red colour — which, when viewed through the microscope, are seen to be 

 due to groups of cells containing coloured sap, these cells having some- 

 times cells with colourless sap scattered amongst them. 



Mr. M'ArdIvE exhibited Codonia Kaljsii^ Wils., Gottsche, and a slide 

 showing the antheridia. The specimens were collected last January by 

 himself and the Rev. Canon Lett on the damp hollows among the sand- 

 hills at Malahide, Co. Dublin, where it was first found many years ago 

 by the late Dr. D. Moore. In mode of growth it resembles Fossombro7iiai 

 but it is easily separated from that genus and all others by the peculiar 

 lamellar processes of the fronds. The only other localities known for 

 this rare hepatic in Ireland are the North Bull, Dollymount, Co. Dublin, 

 and East Innyferry, Waterville, Co. Kerry, where Dr. Scully discovered 

 it in 1889. In England, about Penzance, Cornwall, collected by Ralfs 

 and others. Collected at Anglesey, Holyhead, by Mr. Pearson in 1900 ; 

 it is also reported from Southport, in Lancashire, and Contham Marsh, 

 Yorkshire. It was collected by M. Trabut in Algiers. 



BELFAST NATURALISTS' FIELD CLUB. 



Febr. 18— ]Mr. Chari^ks M. Cunningham, L.D.S., read an interesting 

 paper on "The Teeth of Vertebrates." Previous to the formal meeting, 

 the usual " Science Gossip Half-hour " occupied the members' attention, 

 various objects of interest being exhibited and discussed. The chair was 

 taken by Mr. Wii.i<iam Gray, M.R.I.A., who opened the proceedings by 

 referring in feeling terms to the loss the community had sustained by 

 the death of the Marquess of DufFerin and Ava, who was one of the three 

 honorary members of the Club. Mr. Cunningham then proceeded with 

 his lecture. He began b}- pointing out the important part which teeth 

 had played in the identification of extinct animals, their extreme hard, 

 ness rendering them more indestructible than other tissues. Primitive 

 forms of teeth were then described, and the lecturer explained the 

 difference between horny teeth and true teeth, emphasising the necessity 

 of regarding dentine as the essential element in the latter. Then fol- 

 lowed an interesting series of illustrations showing peculiar features in 

 the teeth of fishes ; the serried rows of teeth in the sharks, the hinged 

 teeth of the Hake, the palatine, vomer, and throat teeth of other fishes, 

 and the remarkable teeth on the "saw" of the Sawfish. An account 

 was then given of the teeth of reptiles, proving their primitive type, and 

 the working of the wonderful poison-apparatus of the Rattlesnake wag 



