30 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [1884. 



ture, and that they put out buds and a new growth in the spring. 

 To discover if this be the ease he had placed some fragments in 

 water, and while awaiting results he had been surprised at the 

 appearance within a few daj^s amongst the fragments of Urnatelta, 

 of numbers of the recently described chsetobranch-worm, Mana- 

 yunkia speciosa, of Leidy, as well as several living cells of a 

 species of Faludicella, probably F. elongata, of the same author. 

 The persistence and tenacity of life in these apparently delicate 

 creatures, overcoming not only the severity of a hard winter,, but 

 an exposure of several days in the open air, were further com- 

 mented upon. 



February 19. 



The President, Dr. Leidy, in the chair. 



Thirty-seven members present. 



The deaths of Dr. Geo. Engelmann and Prof. Arnold Guyot, 

 correspondents, were announced. 



Indian use of Apocynum cannabinum as a textile fibre. — At 

 the meeting of the Botanical Section held on the 18th inst., Mr. 

 Thomas Meehan stated that while it was well known that the 

 fibre of Apocynum canaahinum was used by the Eastern Indians 

 in the manufacture of baskets, mats and other articles, he had 

 heard it doubted whether the same plant was used by the Indians 

 in the West. He had interested a ladj- in Washoe Valley, West- 

 ern Nevada, to get direct from the Indians of that section stems 

 of the plant used by them. She had done so, and he now exhib- 

 ited them. They proved to be the same plant, Apocynum can- 

 nabinum,. 



The Longevity of Trees. — Professor Sheafer, of Pottsville, Pa,, 

 i-eading an abstract of Mr. Meehan's remarks, in Proceedings of 

 the Academy , had cut and sent for the inspection of members some 

 specimens from Schuylkill county, remarkable for slow growth, 

 of a black oak, Quercus tinctoria, in which the annual growths 

 showed in a little over two inches from the centre an average of 

 36 circles to an inch ; one of hemlock spruce, Abies Canadensis, 

 51 to an inch; and one of the common chestnut, Castanea vesca 

 Americana, 24 to an inch. Though only four inches in diameter, 

 the oak stem was seventy-six years old ; the hemlock one hun- 

 dred and four years and in diameter four inches ; and the chestnut 

 four and a half inches in diameter in sixty years. 



With a struggle for life either from poverty of the soil, eleva- 

 tion, or close growth of trees, which the small annual growths 



