SOCIETY OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY, OF GENEVA. 351 



Professor Fee, of Strasburg-, read a memoir upon tlie determination 

 of plauts mentioned by tbe ancients; in wbicU be shows especially bow 

 excessively dilticult it is to arrive at a sufficiently detinite deteimina- 

 tion which would enable ns with any dej^ree of accuracy to apply the 

 old nomenclature to tbe new. A recent work by M. Uubani, far from 

 settling' tbe inherent difficulties of this question onl}' furnished a new 

 Ijroof of its complexity. 



ZOOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



Among" the strangers who have attended our sessions, Messrs. Guenee 

 and Bigot have for several montbs given their time to tlie arrangement 

 of the entomological collections of our museum; especially the lirst of 

 these gentlemen, who for six montbs has been at work in onr labora- 

 tories. Mr. Bigot has classified tbe Dijnera and M. Guenee tbe Lcpi- 

 doptcra. As the collections are about to be removed to the new 

 academic buildings, where they will be properly exhibited, such a classi- 

 fication, by competent men, is of great importance. 



M. Guenee discovered in our cases several new species of I'apiUo and 

 allied genera ; also a Bomhicidc, which exhibits a very remarkable 

 case of hermaphrodism ; in this the organs of the two sexes, instead of 

 being localized, are mingled and distributed tbrough nearly all parts of 

 the body. Tbe article on this subject hj M. Guenee will be inserted in 

 our memoirs. 



M. Claparede has studied the cysts of a fera sent to him by M. Lunel. 

 Tlie muscles of this lish inclosed various cysts, most of which contained 

 a liquid greatly resembling milk. In one of them was a cheesy, whitish 

 substance, evidently produced by the metamorphosis of a lacteous liquid, 

 similar to that in tbe other cysts, but the more fluid elements of which 

 had been re-absorbed. Tbe constituent elements of these cysts were 

 psorospermies, resembling each other, and composed of a head of len- 

 ticular form, and a tail double from its base. With these psorospermies 

 there was always found a granular protoplasm, at whose expense tbe 

 psorospermies were developed. These facts have been observed before, 

 but what was especially remarkable in the fera in question was the 

 liresence of other cysts in the mucus of the gills, but with psorosper- 

 mies very different, and much smaller, having a diameter of only one- 

 fourth to one-tenth of a millimeter. Their abundance gives to the entire 

 bronchial apparatus a grayish tint. These psorosphermies were not 

 lenticular, but perfectly spherical, and without a tail, each inclosing a 

 spherical kernel, very refracting, and some small giains. M. Claparede 

 thinks tbere must be a generic connection between tbe small cysts of 

 the gills and the large cysts of tbe muscles. However, no observations 

 have as yet confirmed this hypothesis. Upon one of tbe arches of the 

 gills was a cyst of about a millimeter in size, of which the contour was 

 very different from the other gill-cysts, and resembled somewhat those 

 of the muscular cysts. These psorospermies are distiugnished from 



