S ' p I t .''l Field Naturalists' Club — Proceedings. 67 



Recently, while examining some material collected from the 

 lake, he found a male specimen of the species referred to 

 which, in addition to the spine always found on the outside 

 of the apical claw of the left leg, near its base, had another 

 spine on the inside of the same claw, and nearer the base than 

 the normal outside one. This was only the second occasion 

 on which he had found an abnormal structure in a fresh-water 

 cope pod . 



The specimen was exhibited under the microscope, a drawing 

 ol ;i normal limb being shown for comparison. 



REMARKS ON EXHIBITS. 



Mr. F. (i. A. Barnard, referring to his exhibit of a growing 

 plant of the fern Botrychium tematum, Swartz, Meadow Moon- 

 wort, said that the plant was collected during a Club excursion 

 some twenty-five years ago. It was an annual plant, which 

 usually sent up but two fronds each season — a fertile and an 

 infertile one — and if either of these happened to be destroyed 

 it was not replaced. This year the two fronds were eaten off 

 by slugs soon after they appeared, and he naturally expected 

 that the plant would remain frondless till next spring, as had 

 happened before, but this year it had produced a third 

 (infertile) frond. He considered the species an interesting one, 

 and worthy of cultivation. Though distributed all over the 

 world, it seemed to be nowhere plentiful. The specimen under 

 notice was collected in the Oakleigh district. 



Mr. F. Pitcher, in drawing attention to the exhibit of acacia 

 blooms from the Botanic Gardens, mentioned that the speci- 

 men shown that evening as Acacia fimbriata, A. ('mm., had 

 been for many years wrongly labelled in the Gardens as .1. 

 protninens. 



Mr. J. Searle, in referring to his exhibit of specimens of sea- 

 pens, collected at Western Port, gave some account of the life- 

 history and method of growth of this group of animal life. He 

 said that the family Pennatulidae contains some of the most 

 beautiful of fixed marine animals. The sea-pens are colonies 

 of little polyps, differing from the coral polyps, to which they 

 are related, in that, instead of secreting calcareous tubes in 

 which to dwell, they are supported by a limy central rod, which 

 is covered with a fleshy ccenosarc : this branches nut in a numbei 

 of pinnae, along which the polyps grow. They are brilliantly 

 coloured, and some are very luminescent. They live fixed on 

 the bed of the sea. the stalk-shaped portion lifting the polyp- 

 bearing part above the sea hot torn. The primary polyp is 

 developed from a fertilized egg, and forms the main axis on 

 which the secondary polyps are carried : these, in turn, by 

 means of stolans, give rise to tertiary polyps, and so the colony 

 grows. 



