1896-97-] Microscopical and Natural History Exhibition. 291 



those equally interesting and highly developed single cells, 

 Caulerpa; and those bundles of tubes, Udotea, — which all 

 inhabit the Mediterranean, and specimens of which we got 

 from the Marine Station at Naples. Nor did we neglect a 

 representative of shell-boring seaweeds (Gomontia) ; and some 

 of us got at Cumbrae examples of the Plankton flora, the curious 

 Ceratium, and some ocean diatoms. Among the red seaweeds 

 we had Xemalion, Delesseria, Uhodymenia, Ceramium, Bonne- 

 maisonia, Gigartina, Plocamium, Dasya, Ptilota, Corallina, and 

 others, — all these I have mentioned being in fruit. We had 

 Oscillaria and Nostoc to represent the more degenerate blue- 

 green forms. 



[The report concluded with the exhibition of about forty 

 lantern slides, to illustrate some of the inferences which might 

 be drawn from these winter studies. Starting with the as- 

 sumption that plant life in its simplest forms first appeared in 

 the ocean, not far from the shore, the course was traced which 

 a simple little green sphere with a nucleus probably followed 

 in passing from the life in the sea to life on land, on its way to 

 become the land plant with " tapering stem and bright con- 

 summate flower." Eeproduction in the green marine algae, it 

 was pointed out, is altogether of a very simple character. The 

 ocean is the home of uniformity, of vegetative equality, and of 

 conservatism. It was in adversity that sex was developed. 

 When the little simple tubular cells got into lagoons and fresh- 

 water lakes, where the water was often dried up, they de- 

 veloped a complicated process for preventing the extinction of 

 the race. Reference was also made to the splendid inves- 

 tigations of Klebs in cultivating algae, and some of the in- 

 ferences that may be drawn from them.] 



MICROSCOPICAL AND NATURAL HISTORY 



EXHIBITION. 



On February 24 the evening meeting took the form of an 

 exhibition of microscopical and natural history specimens, laid 

 out in the Hall at 20 George Street. A large number of 



