Hyatt.] 



24 



The following gentlemen were elected Resident Members : 

 Messrs. John M. Batchelder, Samuel W. Creech, Jr., Martin 

 McKenzie, W. C. Henck, Jeffrey Richardson, Charles H. 

 Parker, William L. Parker, S. G. Snelling, F. W. Brewer, H. 

 P. Kidder, John A. Blanchard, Isaac D. Farnswoith, Thomas 

 A. Goddard, George W. Wales, Charles D. Head, Thomas J. 

 Lee, E. P. Bancroft and Frank S. Fiske. 



3farch 16, 1864. 

 Mr. C. K. Dillaway in the chair. 



Present, fifty-three members. 



Mr. Alpheus Hyatt made some remarks on the general 

 structure of the shells of Cephalopoda. 



The septa had heretofore been supposed in all varieties and at all 

 ages of growth, to be separated by regular intervals. But, in a nat- 

 ural section of a fragment of an undoubted Orthoceras, found by the 

 Cambridge Expedition in the Silurian of AntlcostI, the septa did not 

 run in parallel lines, but Inclined to each other, so that the ventral 

 and dorsal edges of alternate septa met, forming a regular but very 

 acutely angled zigzag line upon the surface of the section. 



This zigzag aiTangement, however, was apparently a characteristic 

 of the development of the young rather than of the adult, since in 

 the last three septa observable in the fragment, the ventral and dorsal 

 edges no longer meet and the partitions were more nearly parallel. 



The specimens are probably identical with some of the Orthocera- 

 tites described by Mr. Billings, but the want of figures in the Cana- 

 dian Survey renders the identification of the sj^ecles rather difiicult. 



Mr. C. C. Sheafe exhibited to the Society the plan of 

 Whelpley & Storer's new furnace for the extraction of gold ore 

 from its gangue ; they claiming for this invention, that it is the 

 only process by which an entire separation can be made. The 

 principle herein introduced consists in first heating to a white 

 heat the ore finely crushed, and then plunging it in water. 

 By this means the gangue rock is exploded as soon as it 

 touches the water into line dust, and the gold falls in glob- 



