Proceedings. 85 



the nourishment has been all extracted, the refuse, which is 

 of no use, is pushed out of its body at any part, the hole so 

 formed closing up, and leaving the body quite as whole as 

 before. 



Some of these animalcules make themselves houses, and 

 these are of a very beautiful kind. Now suppose instead of 

 each having a solitary house to itself, the Ammha found it 

 would be an easier way of living and obtaining its food by 

 clubbing together with a lot of other Ammbas, and getting them 

 to join their houses to make a town of them. Such towns 

 are in existence, and we call them Sponges. You know that 

 a bath- sponge, for instance, is made up of a mass of fibres, 

 and that through this mass holes, or we may call them 

 streets, run in all directions ; in certain parts of these streets, 

 which we will call public squares, numbers of the small whips, 

 or cilia, which I spoke of just now, are fastened to the walls, 

 and these keep constantly lashing the water along ; thus 

 keeping up a constant current, and this current of course 

 carries particles of food all through the streets. 



Prof. Huxley describes the Sponge thus: — "It represents 

 a kind of subaqueous city, where the people are arranged 

 about the streets and roads in such a manner that each can 

 easily appropriate his food from the water as it passes along." 



Mr. Thomas P. Newman read a paper on ' Wind and 

 Storm,' of which the following is the substance : — 



Water always has a tendency to find its own level. Sup- 

 posing it were possible to make a great hole in the sux'face of 

 a sheet of water, the surrounding water would rush in and 

 fiU it up, and the rushing in to fill up the hollow would cause 

 waves and motion over the surface generally. Air, being a 

 gas, is even more easily moved than water, and so the 

 slightest difference in level is met by an effort to regain it ; 

 and thus motion in the atmosphere is caused. The greater 

 the difference, the greater the motion. 



The atmosphere over the Atlantic is constantly flowing in 

 big waves, like an immense river, from west to east, say 

 from America to Europe, with areas of high pressure for 

 crests, and depressions for hollows ; and it is in this varying 



