52 Linnean Society. [Feb. 4, 



Mr. Solly, F.L.S., exhibited two splendid drawings executed by- 

 Mrs. Withers of a male plant of Encephalartos pungens, which 

 flowered in the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew, in October last. 



Mr. IliiF, F.L.S., exhibited some urate of ammonia voided by the 

 Boa Constrictor at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, in the midst of 

 which were several larvse supposed by Mr, Curtis to be those of the 

 Musca Canicularis of Linnaeus. Mr. Iliff is of opinion they were 

 voided with the excrements of the Boa, and referred to a case in the 

 Memoirs of the Medical Society of London, where he beUeves si- 

 milar larvae were voided from the intestines of a man. 



Specimens of the Lastrea rigida collected at Settle, Yorkshire, 

 were presented by Mr. Daniel Cooper, A.L.S. 



Read " Observations on the Ergot." By Francis Bauer, Esq., 

 F.R.S., and L.S. 



The author, as is well known, has made the ergot a subject of 

 particular study, and about thirty years ago he undertook, at the 

 suggestion of Sir Joseph Banks, a series of careful microscopical ob- 

 servations, with a view to determine the nature and cause of that 

 singular production, and the beautiful drawings prepared by him at 

 that time, illustrative of the ergot in various stages of its develop- 

 ment, form part of the Banksian collections now deposited in the 

 British Museum. Mr. Bauer's investigation led him to determine 

 the ergot to be a morbid condition of the seed, but he was unsuc- 

 cessful in ascertaining the cause of the disease, which Messrs. Smith 

 and Quekett have satisfactorily shown to be occasioned by a mi- 

 nute filamentous fungus, a fact already recorded at p. 1 & 4. After a 

 long lapse of years Mr. Bauer was induced to resume the subject, 

 and the result has been an additional drawing from his masterly 

 pencil, displaying the minute fungus already noticed in different 

 stages of its growth. The fungus has been named by Mr. Quekett 

 Ergotatia abortifaciens. 



February 4. 

 Mr. Forster, V.P., in the Chair. 



Thomas White Mann, Esq., of Upper Hollo way, was elected a 

 Fellow ; and Mr. David Moore, Curator of the Botanic Garden at 

 Glasnevin near Dublin, was elected an Associate of the Society. 



