ABSTRACT OF PROCEEDINGS, 
1871. 
February 15th, 1871.—Henry Lee, Esq., President, in the 
chair. Mr. Harry Townend was balloted for and duly elected. 
Dr. Strone read a paper “On Bonz Structure,” taking as 
the heads of his subject, Ist, the appearance seen in ordinary 
transverse and longitudinal sections of bone ; 2nd, the varieties of 
bone, and in what they differ ; 3rd, the development of bone, how 
it is formed, how nourished, and finally its chemical composition. 
In the discussion which followed, 
The Presipent remarked that microscopical comparison of 
the size, form, and proportionate number of bone cells, and the 
canaliculi radiating from them, had been. productive of very 
important results in contributing to our knowledge of some of the 
remarkable animals which existed on the earth in former ages. 
As an example of this he would mention that about the year 1845 
Professor Owen read a paper before the Geological Society, on 
some Ornitholites (fossil remains of birds) from the chalk, the 
bone especially described being a portion of the humerus of a 
(supposed) longi-pennate bird. Subsequent discoveries of similar 
bones led Dr. Bowerbank to believe that these so-called bird-bones 
were those of the great flying reptile, the Pterodactyl. By one of 
those strange coincidences of thought which not unfrequently 
happen in scientific investigation, Professor Quekett was also 
impressed with their similarity, and he and Dr. Bowerbank— 
neither of them aware of the experiments which the other was 
pursuing—determined upon a close microscopical examination of 
the structural peculiarities of the bones, in the hope of eliciting 
some characters, which would, in conjunction with their external 
forms, point out with some degree of certainty the class of animals 
to which these remains in reality belonged. They arrived inde- 
pendently at the same conclusion—that the bones of birds, 
reptiles, fishes, and mammals, each possess marked peculiarities 
which furnish a means of deciding disputed relations of obscure 
and difficult tribes of existing animals, as well as of ascertaining 
the true relations of such paleontological remains as it might be 
otherwise difficult or impossible, from their dilapidated condition, 
to refer to their real position amongst animals. 
In illustration of Dr. Strong’s paper, Mr. Lee also exhibited 
the head of a boy’s thigh bone, which had come away from the 
