PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 179 
ever, this turn out truly a new type, he would venture to pro- 
pose a new generic title, Raphidiophrys, and call this curious 
form Raphidiophrys viridis. 
Mr. Archer further drew attention to a new form in the genus 
Achlya (Nees v. Esenb.) dicecious, the oogonia curiously and 
densely cornute, which he called A. cornuta; a figure of which, 
and more detailed reference, appears in the present number of 
this Journal. 
Mr. Archer exhibited (for the first time in Ireland) that charm- 
ing rotiferon, Conochilus volvox. This seems to have been fre- 
quently enough taken in England, and, though now seemingly for 
the first time recorded in Ireland, Professor Greene, of Cork, had 
informed Mr. Archer that he had before taken this handsome 
species. 
NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE Mecuantcs’ Institution Fine Arts’ 
EXHIBITION. 
Conversazione and Microscopical Soirée. 
There were upwards of two dozen microscopes, with a number 
of interesting objects to be seen through them. In so numerous 
a collection it is impossible, with the limited space at our com- 
mand, to go through the whole seriatim; and yet, at the risk of 
laying ourselves open to the charge of being invidious, we cannot 
refrain from making reference to two or three of the number, as 
being novel and unique. In addition to those to which reference 
will be found made in Mr. Barkas’s lecture below, we may men- 
tion several objects exhibited by Messrs. Mawson and Swan, one 
more especially showing the beautiful and interesting effect pro- 
duced by crystals under the polarized light. Perhaps the most 
wonderful—as it was certainly the most novel—object in the 
whole exhibition, was that of an ordinary photograph of Shak- 
speare, as seen through the eye of a beetle. The latter was thus 
shown to be a series of lenses, each not more than 545th part of 
an inch in diameter. The microscope is converted into a tele- 
scope, the eye of the beetle forming the object-glass, the effect 
being that, on looking through the ordinary eye-piece of the 
instrument, the photograph is multiplied by as many times as 
there are lenses of the beetle’s eye within the focus of vision, the 
whole of the figures being exactly equidistant from each other. 
It was exhibited by Mr. John Brown, sen., and, it is needless to 
state, was a source not only of attraction, but of wonder and 
admiration, to the many who had the privilege of seeing it. Mr. 
J. Davison exhibited a fresh-water hydra, a very curious object, 
one peculiarity about it being that it cannot be destroyed by any 
process of cutting, &c.; the only effect of that being that, instead 
