WATFOKD NATTJKAL HISTORY SOCIETY. Ivii 



Field Meeting, 5th May, 1877. 

 Stanmore Common. 



This meeting having been arranged to enable members to collect 

 microscopic objects for exhibition at the succeeding evening meet- 

 ing (10th May), there is but little to record. The place of meeting 

 was at the corner of the Common, at the junction of the road from 

 "Watford to Stanmore with that to Harrow. Some members arrived 

 here from London, walking from Harrow station by Harrow Weald 

 and Bentley Priory, and others came direct from Watford and from 

 the more immediate neighbourhood. 



The meeting was under the direction of Mr. Arthur Cottam, and 

 under his guidance the various pools on the Common were searched 

 with more or less success, the most beautiful object found (when 

 viewed under the microscope) being the Rotifer, ConocMlus volvox. 



After spending some time in collecting microscopic and other 

 plants and animals — for several botanists and entomologists were 

 among the party — the members left the Common, the majority 

 walking to Watford, not however without a rest on the way, for 

 at his residence on Bushey Heath Mr. William Verini most kindly 

 provided tea. Although the weather was cold for the time of the 

 year, the air was dry and the road dusty, making the rest and 

 refreshment especially acceptable. 



Oedinaey Meeting, 10th May, 1877. 



Alfred T. Brett, Esq., M.D., President, in the Chair. 



Miss Lucy A. Gaubert, Chalk Hill, Bushey, and Mr. W. R. 

 Woolrych, Croxley Green, Rickmansworth, were elected Members 

 of the Society. 



The following papers were read : — 



1. " On Microscopic Fungi." By E. M. Chater ( Vide p. 231). 



The President said that microscopic fungi were most important agents in the 

 great laboratory of nature. They were the innocent cause of more misery and 

 crime, and of more disease of body and of mind in the human race than any other 

 agent ; for fermentation, and therefore the production of alcohol, was their 

 entire work. Fermentation had been well called by Pasteur " life without air." 

 The Torula, if deprived of air, would live by extracting oxygen from sugar in 

 solution, and it thus caused a set of changes one result of which was the produc- 

 tion of wine or alcohol ; and the PeniciUium, if allowed to grow on the surface 

 of a fluid where it could obtain oxygen from the air, would grow rapidly and not 

 produce alcohol, but forcibly submerge the little plant — push it down deep into 

 the liquid where the quantity of free oxygen was insufficient for its needs— it 

 immediately began to act as a ferment, supplying itself with oxygen by the 

 decomposition of the sugar, and producing alcohol as one of the products of de- 

 composition. Other microscopic plants also acted in a similar manner. 



2. " Notes on some Hertfordshire Plants." By R. A. Pry or 

 B.A., F.L.S.* 



* The publication of this paper is unavoidably postponed. 



VOL. I. — PT. IX. H 



