DUBLIN MICROSCOPICAL CLUB. 93 



tumbling, jerking kind of revolution hither and thither, not however 

 at all always displayed, — it would hardly attract notice ; and, when 

 attention might become arrested, so little apparent " structure" was 

 evident, it would be no very great stretch of imagination to suppose 

 that a number together of these variously sized though always 

 minute little bodies were so many quartzose granules moving about — 

 a kind of " animated sand" — gleaming however with more or less of 

 alternating reddish or bluish sheen. That they were really com- 

 posed of groups of minute chroococcaceous cells combined into a 

 " shapeless " aggregation by a common matrix, the application of 

 potash showed ; but, as in some other minute organisms, by what 

 agency the little cluster moved, remains equally a problem. It may 

 be well here to dissipate at once any assumption that this motion 

 was merely "molecular;" it was clearly not so, but a decidedly 

 vigorous and energetic, though more or less vacillating and fitful, 

 locomotion, from place to place, hither and thither, " at random." But 

 as it would appear almost impossible to convey in Minutes like these, 

 unassisted by anything in the way of a figure, an idea of what such 

 a thing as the present was really like, it would be but a waste of 

 space to try to enter into any more lengthened description of this 

 little affair here. To some extent, of course (in the fact of motion, 

 in the chroococcaceous nature), it comes close to Bacterium, and 

 alHes— but it differs too, both in the hind of motion or mode in 

 which it is executed, and in structure, if such term might be con- 

 sidered allowable in a thing such as this. It is possibly not un- 

 common, but may be overlooked readily in the quiescent condition ; 

 inasmuch as it may turn up for exhibition perhaps some time 

 again, and owing to the difficulty of expatiating on it here to any 

 good purpose, it is just as well to leave it in abeyance. 



Hesolved, — That this Meeting of the Club cannot separate 

 without placing on record the regret with which they have just 

 heard the intelligence of the death of Robert Callwell, one of the 

 earliest Associate Members of this Club, and one of the founders of 

 the old Dublin Microscopical Society, now many years dissolved. 

 He was always ready to give any assistance in his power to the 

 microscopist, and his loss will be felt as a personal one by man}' of 

 the Club Members. 



VI th August, 1871. 



Rev. Eugene O'Meara exhibited an example of a new Navicula — 

 N. spiralis — possessing what appeared to him to have the aspect 

 of a siliceous coil running on each side of, and close to, the median 

 line, and as if external to, but yet attached upon, the frustule. It 

 became a question of debate as to whether this was an actual inde- 

 pendent spiral composed of silex or a kind of marking simulating 

 such. If indeed the former, it had, at least in certain states of the 

 focus, much the appearance of the latter. Mr. O'Meara leant 

 rather to the former opinion. — Mr. O'Meara -likewise exhibited 

 Gampylodiscus Norinannianus. 



