Journal of ProceedinfjH. Ixxvii 



In commencing the scientific business of the evening, the President 

 directed attention to the specimens of Fungi from the Forest, fifty species 

 in all, which had been preserved for the Club's Museum by Mr. English, 

 in fulfilment of an order from the Secretary. They were capital speci- 

 mens, and would form a nice nucleus for a collection of the Fungi of 

 Essex, which he hoped ere long to see in their Museum. 



The Kev. W. Linton Wilson read the following note on some Tadpoles 

 which he had had in his Aquarium since the early summer, and which 

 were still true tadpoles, not having changed into frogs : — 



" On June 25th last year the Club did me the honour to hold a meeting 

 at Oakhurst, Chigwell. On that occasion I had a number of tadpoles of 

 the Common Frog in a bell-glass. They were very lively and well, living 

 in the broad daylight among starwort, duckweed, ivy-leaved duckweed, 

 and water crowfoot, and accompanied by fresh- water mussels, snails, 

 newts, boatmen, beetles, a good many larvae, shrimps, and mites. Some 

 of them had already developed their hind legs, others were not so forward. 



" I am writing on the 7th of January, 1882, and many of those tad- 

 poles are still tadpoles, and little tadpoles too ! 



" They ought of course long ago to have developed true lungs, to have 

 absorbed their fish-like gills, to have produced first the hind legs, and 

 then a fortnight later the fore legs, and finally they ought to have 

 absorbed their tails. Then they would have continued to live as frogs, 

 and left the water, to return to it only occasionally. They have not 

 grown, they have not developed. And I am inclined to think that one or 

 two of them that had at one time put forth a little bud for their hind 

 legs, gradually absorbed it again and returned to the first tadpole stage. 



" In order to try whether a change of condition would induce any 

 further growth or development, on the 1st of December I removed four 

 of them to a vessel having a sloping bottom so arranged that the 

 animals could get out of the water if they chose to do so. In a fort- 

 night they were all dead. The remainder continued to live in the 

 bell-glass. 



" The glass has always had an abundant supply of floating weed, 

 and an island of cork. But the water has been about four inches 

 from the top, and has remained unchanged since June Tith, except 

 that on the 1st of December we added four or five gallons of well- 

 water to it, to make up the loss by evaporation."* 



Mr. Lockyer remarked that he recollected seeing, when at Oakliurst, in 

 June last, a very thick growth of duck-weed on the top of the water in 

 the aquarium, and he suggested that this dense growth might have inter- 

 fered with the well-being of the little animals, perhaps by shutting olf 

 the necessary supply of free atmospheric air. 



Mr. W. Cole called attention to the fact, possibly bearing upon the 

 subject then under discussion, that frogs (very small ones) were often seen 

 in gardens free from water, and so surrounded by walls that it was difficult 

 to see how they could have wandered in from any neighbouring pond. 

 He suggested, as a possible solution, that under certain conditions the 

 whole larval life of the creature might be passed within the egg, the 



* An instance of retarded development in tadpoles of the Smooth Newt (LfSjfofriVoK 

 punctatus) is recorded by Mr. G. T. Hope in ' Zoologist ' for April, 1882 (vol. vi. 3rd ser. 

 152.) The facts note. I by ^ir. Hope arc very similar to those observed by Mr. Wilson. — Ed. 



