PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



Dublin Miceoscopical Club. 



20th April, 1871. 



Rev. E. O'Meara showed a specimen of Striatella interrupta 

 found in a gathering made by him in Strangford Lough, near 

 Newtownards, Co. Down. He considered it in all respects iden- 

 tical with the form described by Heiberg (' De Danske Diat.,' 

 p. 73, t. V, fig. 15) under the name Striatella interrupta. He 

 remarked that, while he agreed with that distinguished author in 

 separating this form from Striatella unipunctata, he differed from 

 his opinion that it is identical with Tessella interrupta, so 

 vaguely described by Ehrenberg, and figured, not very accurately, 

 by Kiitzing and Ealfs in " Pritchard." The two forms he con- 

 sidered quite distinct, and in corroboration of his view referred 

 to some specimens of Tessella interrupta recently found in situ, 

 on sea-weeds, collected many years ago by IM'Calla in the County 

 Gralway, and now in the herbarium of Trinity College. While 

 these forms agree in having the diaphragms alternately disposed, 

 there was a marked diflference in the structure of the diaphragms. 

 In Striatella the diapnragms extend Irom one end of the frustule 

 almost to the opposite end. In <S'. tmipunctata these diaphragms 

 are filled up only a very short distance from the point of inser- 

 tion, and are hollow lor the remainder of their course. In S. in- 

 terrupta the diaphragms are filled up to the centre, and hollow 

 Irom that out. The diaphragms in Tessella extend no further 

 than the middle of the frustule, where they slightly overlap ; they 

 seem also projected from the margin at an angle greater than 

 90°, whereas in Striatella they are projected at right angles. 

 Grunow, he added, identifies Tessella with Striatella ; but con- 

 sidering the peculiarities indicated, as well as the general appear- 

 ances of the valves, he felt disposed to regard Striatella and 

 Tessella as distinct, though closely allied, genera. 



Mr. Thiselton Dyer showed a section of the wood of, as he 

 believed, an undescribed British fossil palm. The section was 

 made from a rolled nodule belonging to Professor Church, of the 

 Agricultural College at Cirencester, and which was picked up on 

 the beach at Southwold, in Suff'olk. It no doubt came from the 

 coprolite bed of the Red Crag ; but this was itself a littoral accu- 

 mulation of the debris of older rocks, and the fossil palm wood, 

 though found in a Pliocene deposit, was almost certainly of Eocene 

 age. Similar nodules of that age have been found on the Sussex 



