Wellington Philosophical Society. 539 



order. The points which he had desired to emphasize in his notice of 

 this fungus were, in the first place, its faculty of attracting insects hy 

 means of its brilliant flower-like appearance, coupled with the pungent 

 odour of its viscid secretion ; and, secondly, its power of digesting and 

 absorbing them into its own system after being caught. The " sea- 

 anemone " form of Aseroe, referred to by Sir James Hector as occurring at 

 the Hutt, must be an entirely distinct species, and was deserving of atten- 

 tion, the only two New Zealand forms at present known to botanists 

 being A. rubra and A. hookeri. As to Sir J. Hooker's undoubted share in 

 the credit of the discovery as to the carnivorous properties of Drosera, he 

 might mention that on the occasion of his first visit to Darwin, at his 

 beautiful home in Kent (in the year 1873), he found Sir Joseph Hooker 

 there, and they had been employed the whole of that Sunday forenoon 

 making experiments upon these vegetable secretions, with the grand 

 result that they had discovered or demonstrated that this solvent was the 

 exact analogue of the gastric juice in animals, and that the insect food 

 passed through practically the same process of digestion and assimilation. 

 The results of this investigation, and of the subsequent series of experi- 

 ments on living and growing plants by feeding them systematically on 

 particles of raw flesh, are fully stated in Darwin's famous work on the 

 subject. 



Mr. Cohen exhibited a specimen of the leaf -insect from 

 Fiji. 



Sir J. Hector exhibited a minute insect taken from a 

 Spanish chestnut tree which it had destroyed. Mr. Bright 

 had sent it from Greytown. 



Mr. Hudson thought it was indigenous. He had observed 

 it boring in native trees ; he had not fully examined them yet. 



Mr. Maskell showed specimens supposed to be blights, but 

 which he said were quite harmless. 



Sir James Hector exhibited a trout which had been caught 

 in the Wanganui Eiver, near the Heads, by Mr. S. H. Drew, 

 which, after examination, he considered to be a cross between 

 the Loch Leven trout and a brown trout, and which had thereby 

 acquired the characteristics of the Galway trout. Sir James 

 Hector expressed the opinion that it was a pity the acclima- 

 tisation societies had put different kinds of trout in the same 

 rivers, because crossed forms were sure to be the result, and 

 no good specimens of fish would be obtained. He further 

 stated that he had caught a Loch Leven trout in the Hutt 

 Eiver, and a fish which he believed was a true specimen of the 

 Californian salmon. 



Sir W. Buller presented the following pamphlets to the 

 Society, which were laid on the table : — 



1. " On the Sponge Eemaius in the Lower Tertiary Strata 

 near Oamaru, Otago, New Zealand," by G. Jennings Hinde, 

 Ph.D., and W. Murton Holmes. (Illustrated.) 



2. "On the Occurrence of Two Species of Cnmacea in New 

 Zealand," by George M. Thomson, F.L.S. (with plates). 



3. "Colenso's New Zealand Hepaticce," revised by F. 

 Stephani (with plates) . 



