166 JOURNAL OF THE [December, 



me: " Do you have access to t'le Journal of the Royal Micro- 

 scopical Society ? I hope you do, but if you do not, the follow- 

 ing from the December (1885) number may interest you. * * * 

 It becomes more than interesting when taken in connection with 

 your ' mysterious diatoms ' experience ; and your observation 

 as a whole is much more remarkable and valuable than Mr. 

 Kitton's. I wish you would publish it, although it may be 

 somewhat incomplete. * * * i am sorry you did not publish 

 your observations long ago and so have been the first to an- 

 nounce the discovery." 



The article in the Royal Microscopical Society's Journal, 

 which is taken from the Journal of the Quekett Club, in brief, 

 says, that Mr. F. Kitton, observing a film on some water in 

 his laboratory, found to his surprise that it was composed of 

 Achnanthes linearis. He then filtered some of the same water 

 and, in time, obtained from it another film made up of the same 

 diatoms, although he burnt and decarbonized the filter-paper 

 without finding any diatoms in it. My own discovery antedates 

 Mr. Kitton's by more than two years, and I think it was at least 

 a year before his discovery and when my first series of experi- 

 ments had for some time been completed, that I made a verbal 

 statement of the main facts at a meeting of the New-Jersey State 

 Microscopical Society. 



