122 REPORT — 1855. 



muscular apparatus during these several states, as well as other functions of the 

 body, were described by the author of the paper. The various properties of the 

 nervous system, as here exhibited, were remarked upon and severally discussed, such 

 as seiuiation, volition, consciousness, and intelliyencc. She sometimes would awake 

 every day, for half an hour or so, and sometimes her slumber would continue un- 

 disturbed for days ; but always when asleep, the greater part of her body was in a 

 state of tetanoid rigidity, which however totally disappeared on awaking. The 

 author considered this muscular contraction to be automatic and not voluntary ; he 

 thought too, that consciousness was only partially, and not totally absent, even in her 

 profoundest slumber. 



0« a curious pouched condition of the Glandulce PeyeriancB in the Giraffe. 

 By Dr. T. Spencer Cobbold. 



Professor Allen Thomson exhibited, on behalf of Dr. Cobbold, Assistant Con- 

 servator of the Anatomical Museum, University of Edinburgh, a preparation of 

 part of the caecum and colon of a giraffe. The specimen showed a complicated 

 series of pouches in connexion with the last patch of compound intestinal glands, 

 which extended beyond the ileo-colic opening, and the whole formed a cellular net- 

 work, resembling in some measure the water cavities of the reticulum. A second 

 specimen was also shown, from which it appeared that certain of the Peyerian 

 patches in the ileum likewise displayed each a simple valvular fold at the duodenal 

 extremity of the glandular masses. 



On the Sexuality of the Algce. By Dr. Ferdinand Cohn, of Breslau. 



In this paper the author first referred to the influence which the newer doctrines 

 of cell-structure and formation had exercised on the progress of animal and vege- 

 table physiology, and pointed out the peculiar advantages presented by the unicel- 

 lular plants for the investigation of sorne of the more hidden vital processes. He 

 then sketched the recent progress of discovery as to the sexuality of different tribes 

 of plants formerly regarded as Cryptogamic. Among the most novel of these dis- 

 coveries, he referred more particularly to the researches of Thuret of Cherbourg, on 

 the Fecundation of the Fucacese (1855), which have incontestably proved the occur- 

 rence of a sexual fecundation in some of the larger Fuci ; and to the observations of 

 Pringslieim of Berlin, also in 1855, which have first extended the same discovery 

 with certainty to some of the lower Algse {Vaucheria). The author stated that he 

 had not only been able to confirm the observations of Pringsheim on these plants, 

 but had himself nearly at the same time (in March 1855) made the discovery of similar 

 phsenomena in others of the lower Algae, Sphtcroplea annulina, &c. 



In this beautiful and delicately organized Conferva the contents of the thread-like 

 plant are arranged in the form of about twenty green rings in each cell. They con- 

 sist, like the spiral bands of Spirogyra, of slimy protoplasma coloured by chlorophyll, 

 and containing a large number of starch-granules. In the month of March, when 

 the time of propagation had arrived, Dr. Cohn observed the cells of this plant to 

 undergo a remarkable transformation, by which some become converted into spo- 

 rangia and others into antheridia. In the first of these bodies the green rings 

 dissolve as it were into a shapeless mass, from which about as many green globular 

 bodies or spores are found as there were previously rings ; and when these are com- 

 plete, seveial small apertures appear in the wall of the mother-cell. In the other 

 cells which are about to become antheridia, the green rings became, under Dr. Cohn's 

 observation, actually broken down and converted into small red stiff corpuscles, each 

 of which bears at its anterior extremity two long fine vibrating filaments. These 

 bodies, which are the spermatozoa, then assume the swarming motion ; soon one or 

 more escape by a small aperture in the cell-wall, and all the rest follow, and they 

 move with vivacity in the surrounding water. They approach the spore-cells, and 

 some of them soon penetrate by the apertures already formed in them ; others 

 follow, and thus the spore-cells become quite lull of them. Dr. Cohn observed the 

 spermatozoa moving about within the spore-cells for two hours, after which they 

 affixed themselves to the surface of the spores and disappeared by diffluence in slimy 



