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on trees some seven or eight feet above the ground. The 

 naturalist Dujardin, in the " Annales de Sciences Naturelles," 

 for 1842 (torn, xviii. p. 129), gives details of their structure, 

 and accounts for the circumstances under which they are found 

 in the following way. The first period of the existence of 

 these worms was in the form of parasites in the grubs of the 

 cockchafer, which take many years before coming to their 

 full growth. Heavy rains saturating the soil compel the 

 grubs, already sick, to contract their bodies and expel these 

 parasites, hence their occurrence after these showers. Their 

 presence on the fruit trees, the President thought, might 

 be explained by their existing in the cockchafers them- 

 selves, which had flown on to the trees previous to the 

 showers. 



Mr. Charles Moore spoke of the abundance of earth worms 

 and slugs which crawled forth at night even in his small gar- 

 den, and stated that to his personal knowledge upwards of 

 25,000 snails and slugs had been destroyed there in one year 

 alone. He also alluded to a fall of small fish which had 

 occurred between 1837 and 1843, over the North Parade and 

 the neighbourhood of Bath. This the President accounted 

 for by a strong whirlwind having caught up the surface water 

 in which they were and deposited them in the places men- 

 tioned. Showers of frogs might be explained in the same 

 way. Mr. Moore also exhibited a drawing in sepia from the 

 ink bag of one of his cuttle fish, specimens of which were 

 placed on the table. Their geological position was then 

 described as being in a thin nodular band of the Upper Lias, 

 from six to eight inches thick, the outer form of these nodules 

 being an index to their contents. It was inferred from the 

 great number of booklets with which their tentacles were 

 armed having been discovered between the ribs of the Saurians, 

 which existed in the same seas, that these cuttle fish formed 

 their food to a large extent. 



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