XXXvill. Proceedings. 
had been put in with a paint brush. This curious departure 
from the normal type had never been satisfactorily explained 
to him. He thought it most likely that it could be explained 
in this way. It may be that at one time the orange tip was 
common to both sexes, and that in course of time it had dis- 
appeared from the female, and that in the female which he had 
mentioned, we had a case of partial reversion to the original 
type. Possibly the same thing had occurred in the case of the 
hen pheasant of which the President had spoken. 
The PRESIDENT questioned the explanation suggested by 
Mr. Geldart. In the case of the pheasant there was no reason 
to suppose that the male ‘plumage was ever common to both 
sexes, on the contrary, the fact that all young pheasants at first 
assumed the plumage of the female, seemed rather to show that 
the plumage of the female was probably, at one time, the 
plumage of both sexes; and that the peculiar characteristic 
plumage of the male did not come into existence till a later 
period, and was always peculiar to the male, being associated 
with the male sexual organs by the mysterious laws of corre- 
lation of growth. It was now well established that a hen 
pheasant never put on male plumage so long as her ovaries 
were in a healthy condition, and that in these cases the abnor- 
mal plumage was always associated with derangement of the 
generative organs, and consequently with barrenness. Pro- 
bably the peculiar colouring in the female butterfly which had 
been described was due to the same cause. Why females 
should assume the external characteristics of the male, because 
their internal organs were diseased, it was impossible to 
explain, but on the other hand it was equally impossible to 
explain why males often assumed female characteristics from 
a similar cause. 
The PresipEnt also exhibited two specimens of Helix 
revelata, one of the rarest of the British snails, which he had 
found in the island of St. Mary’s, Scilly, in September last. 
Mr. K. McKean also exhibited a number of British land 
shells, which were distributed amongst those of the members 
who wished to have them. 
The following objects were also exhibited :—Mr. A. Bennett, 
fungus; Mr. E. Lovett, nest of trap-door spider, sections of 
rocks and woods; Mr. W. L. Sarjeant, horizontal section of 
human foot (foetal); vertical section of scalp, new form of 
microtome ; Mr. A. Warner, section of Wellingtonia gigantea; 
Mr. E. B. Sturge, various sections of woods; Mr. E.Williams, 
sections of woods and coal. 
