250 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



solving of calcareous incrustations, salts, colouring matter, and other 

 organic substances not being gelose. This gelose is found contained 

 in the remaining tissue. It is extracted by boiling in water with- 

 out the breaking up of the tissue. The solution decanted boiling 

 hot becomes a diaphanous jelly upon cooling. It maybe repeatedly 

 liquified at the temperature of boiling water, and will be found each 

 time to gelatinise on cooling. This jelly, when dried, is identical 

 with the principal extracted from the commercial product brought 

 from China. — Prof. Balfour called attention to specimens of a farina- 

 ceous looking substance presented to the Museum by Sir Kobert Chris- 

 tison, and which had been sent from Jamaica by the late Dr. Gilbert 

 M'lNab, accompanied by the following note : "Powder from the inte- 

 rior of the spathe of Areca oleracea^ or mountain Cabbage Palm, of 

 Jamaica. Each spathe yields a quart of it." Under the microscope it 

 is shown to consist of aggregations of cells of an oblong form. They 

 are very mobile, easily separated, and contain no starch. — Prof. Bal- 

 four read a note from Prof. "Williamson, regarding the structure of 

 some fossil stems. Prof. Williamson says : " I have now got a mag- 

 nificent calamite, absolutely arborescent, with a woody zone two inches 

 thick, and a bark which is at least of the same thickness ; the entire 

 organism is so complete as to put the notion held by some, of the 

 vascular zone being cortical sclerenchyma, out of the question. The 

 exogenous growth in calamite is no isolated phenomenon, but runs 

 through nearly all the carboniferous plants, except the ferns, and it 

 everywhere presents the same essential features of growth by external 

 additions and of radiating vascular laminae separated by medullary rays." 

 June lO^A. — Prof. Sir Robert Christison, Bart., in the chair. — 

 " Notice of a Botanical Excursion to Connemara," by Prof. Balfour. 

 " IS'otes of Experiments on Dioncea muscipiila and allied plants," by 

 Thomas A. G. Balfour. He agreed with Ellis, Curtis, Hooker, and 

 Darwin in considering Dioncea as a carnivorous plant, and he classified 

 the facts he had observed in regard to it under the heads of irritability, 

 contraction, secretion, digestion, and absorption. The irritability he 

 described as resident in six delicate hairs, so placed on the surface of 

 the leaf that no insect could avoid touching them in crawling over. 

 He had touched with a needle every other part of the leaf, and no re- 

 sponse followed ; but no sooner was the point applied to one of those 

 hairs than closure of the leaf ensued. Chloroform dropped on a hair 

 caused the leaf to close like a winking eye ; but water had no such 

 effect. It was only when the object seized was capable of affording 

 nutrition that the contraction continued for any considerable length of 

 time. A piece of wood was soon released, and so was a dried fly ; 

 but when a live fly, or caterpillar, or spider was enclosed, the contrac- 

 tion lasted on an average for about three weeks. The leaf at the same 

 time gave out a viscous acid secretion. He did not remember to have 

 seen this unless an insect had been captured ; it was always present 

 after an insect had been secured ; and, whereas with a fat spider it was 

 abundant, with a shrivelled fly there was very little. The idea that 

 any nourishment was obtained from insects so enclosed had, he said, 

 been controverted, but he pointed to ^the facts that young plants of 

 Bioncea under bell glasses had been found not to thrive so well as those 

 left free ; and that, while a piece of beef wrapped in another leaf 



