SOCIETIES. 263 



and habits. Mr. 0. E. Janson exhibited a Goliath beetle, from the 

 Upper Congo, which he believed to be the male of (Toliathu.^ russus, 

 Kolbe, described from an unique female example in the Berlin Museum. 

 Mr. Blandford called attention to the case of the eye of a boy affected 

 with inflammation caused by the hairs of the larvae of Lasiocaiiipa 

 ruhi, the attack recurred after an interval of nineteen weeks, and in 

 several Continental cases this recurrence of the attack had been found 

 to take place, and in some cases permanent injury to the eye had 

 followed. Mr. Blandford discussed the various kinds of hairs on 

 several caterpillars, certain species having hairs of three kinds, one 

 kind being barbed, and thus having the power to work into the skin. 

 He said that the urticating property of the hairs appeared to be 

 mechanical : there was no evidence of any poison glands. Dr. 

 Lawford said he had had some difficulty in discovering hairs in the 

 lid, and he thought that the symptoms in the case in question were 

 not to be explained by mechanical irritation alone due to the presence 

 of hairs in the tissues. The subject was a new one to him, and he 

 had looked up all the medical literature bearing on it. 



The Penarth Entomological and Natural History Society met for 

 tea at the chairman's house on the 28th ult. During the evening the 

 following, among other subjects, were discussed : Dr. G. N. Dunn, 

 M.R.C.S., gave a resume of the accounts of the so-called new discovery 

 by Professor Rontgen. Certain rays of light, or energy, emanating from 

 a Crooke's vacuum tube, lighted by electricity, Avere found to pass 

 through certain bodies hitherto considered opaque. For example : 

 an impression was obtained of the bones of the hand through the flesh, 

 and even through a plate of aluminium. In seeking to repeat the 

 experiment he had failed for want of sufficient electric power. The 

 successful operator, Mr. Campbell Swainton, had employed apparatus 

 almost identical with that used by Nicola Tesla, at his epoch-making 

 lecture given at the Royal Institution, February, 1892, and obtained 

 his power from the electric-lighting mains. Dr. Dunn's opinion as a 

 surgeon was that the discovery was more curious than practical in his 

 profession. Mr. A. H. Trow, B.Sc, gave a short account of the 

 " Material Basis of Heredity," illustrated by the microscope. He 

 showed that the germ in all cases, both of plants and animals, con- 

 sisted of the same component parts, rh., a cell of protoplasm in which 

 existed a minute nucleus. These nuclei, in the animal, closely 

 resembled each other, until the male and female germs combined, 

 when the bundle of threads, as these nuclei appear to be, and which 

 seem to be inextricably entangled, broke up into pairs of rods, varying 

 in number according to the species. From these pairs evolved the 

 offspring, partaking of the characteristics of both parents usually ; 

 but an irregularity in this order of procedure would most likely in- 

 volve a turning back to the characteristics of earlier ancestors. The 

 generation of plants was more complex, there being frequently an 

 intermediate state. For instance, the spores of ferns do not produce 

 ferns, but a flat-lying plant, from beneath which the ferns are finally 

 produced. A cell so tiny as to be absolutely beyond the^power of the 

 human eye to differentiate, might eventually become an elephant or 

 even a Wellingtonea. Mr. C. W. Williams, the chairman, read some 

 notes on Sire.r (/ii/as and S. jurencuti, to settle a disputed point. These 

 insects belong to the tribe Xijlujjhaya, which feed upon and burrow 



