16 
Weall know the phosphorescent appearance of sea water when 
it appears like liquid fire, and no doubt you are all aware this 
is caused by minute jelly-like animalcules, and Darwin records 
how when the vessel was on the coast of Chili, it passed 
through bands of reddish coloured water, which when micro- 
scopically examined, consisted of minute animalcules; they 
were so minute as to be invisible to the naked eye, and yet 
they passed through many successive miles of them. How 
inconceivable then must have been their numbers? In parts 
of the Arctic Ocean the water is coloured an opaque green, 
owing to the presence of countless myriads of minute Me- 
dusz. Scoresby calculates that in a space of two square miles 
there would be congregated together a number, which 80,000 
persons, counting incessantly from the creation until now, 
would not have enumerated, though they worked at the rate 
of one million a week! Even man, the lord of creation, 
is not free from a rather unpleasant redundancy of life 
within his organs, but as this is not a very pleasant subject, 
I will not pursue it, further than to caution you against eating 
underdone meat, especially pork, lest you introduce the germs 
of numerous living parasites into your internal system! Many 
of you saw the Singing Mouse, exhibited by one of our 
members. This curious phenomenon is caused by spasmodic 
breathing, due to the presence of a parasite, the Cys/ercus 
fascicularis; though really the Rodents are so birdlike in many 
of their habits and structural character, that we might hardly 
be surprised if they all sang, for why do birds sing? It is 
quite a mistake to believe all birds sing, the vast majority do 
not, and it is difficult to imagine why many of them do, or 
how they are thereby benefited in their struggle for existence. 
The whole subject of Parasites is a curious, if not a very 
inviting one for investigation, so I think I cannot better 
conclude than by a quotation from Tom Hood’s humourous 
notion on the subject: 
Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, 
And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum. 
I fear I have now trespassed far too long upon your time, but 
if I have only persuaded some of you that the pursuit of 
Natural History is not altogether devoid of interest and 
amusement, I feel I shall not have spoken quite in vain. 
After a short discussion the Secretary was called upon to read 
