368 Linnean Society. [April 18, 



purposes describing, along witli Gibsonia and Sericostoma, a new 



genus of BoraginecE, in the next number of the Bombay Asiatic 

 Journal. 



April 18. 

 T. Horsfield, M.D., V.P., in the Chair. 



Read a continuation of Mr. Newport's Third Memoir " On the 

 Anatomy and Development of Meloe." 



The author remarked that every normal change in structure de- 

 pends on definite laws, and that when the proper operation of these 

 is impeded, or when change is effected by violence, the function of 

 structure is impaired. 



After mentioning that Malpighi, in his anatomy of the Silk- worm, 

 glanced at, and Dr. Willis, in this country, at the end of the seven- 

 teenth century, more particularly announced, the view that changes 

 in structure in all animals are regulated by those general principles 

 which have since been so admirably worked out by Geoffroy Saint- 

 Hilaire, Mr. Newport stated that his object in the present memoir 

 is to further exemplify these principles in the Anatomy oi Meloe, and 

 to endeavour to apply them to the explanation of function as de- 

 pendent on structure. 



Although the object of variations in structure cannot always be 

 at once traced in the details, it is invariably evident in the general 

 design of parts, and it is found to be so likewise in their peculiarities 

 in proportion as we become more fully acquainted with the habits of 

 animals, as is shown in the details of structure in the young Meloe 

 and Stylops at particular periods of their growth. Changes in the 

 structure of parts during growth in the young animal were shown to 

 commence in the cells of the tegument, and that it is by means of 

 these that the form of the body is gradually altered. These changes 

 are not to be confounded with other secondary ones which give form 

 to the adult animal, and which we are familiar with as the meta- 

 jnorphoses. 



The dermal appendages, spines, hairs and scales, were shown to 

 be similar in their mode of origin in the tegument to the appendages 

 of segments, and their growth and removal to be regulated by the 

 same principles. Mr. Newport showed that the appendages originate 

 by an extension outwards of the whole of the layers of a portion of 

 tegument, whilst spines, hairs and scales originate in the nuclei of 



J 



