220 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
Tickets would be issued to the Fellows for the admission of them- 
selves and one friend, and the use of the large theatre of the College 
had been obtained for the purpose. He added, the Council had 
arranged to have another scientific evening meeting on Wednesday, 
April 18, of which due notice would be given. 
The Secretary read a letter which had been received from Mr. 
Frederick Ebsworth, of Australia, describing a method of estimating 
and recording the dimensions of small objects, or the fineness of 
wool. An explanatory diagram accompanied the letter. 
The thanks of the meeting were voted to the writer for his com- 
munication. 
A paper by the Rev. W. H. Dallinger was read by the Secretary, 
entitled “ Additional Note on the Identity of Navicula crassinervis, 
Navicula rhomboides, and Frustulia Saxonica.” (The paper will be 
found at p. 173.) 
The President, in proposing a vote of thanks to Mr. Dallinger, 
said that the subject was one to which he had himself paid little or no 
attention, and therefore it would be out of place for him to say any- 
thing about it; but he thought it must be plain to everybody present 
that the method adopted by Mr. Dallinger could not fail to be the 
right one. He was sure that they would all be very glad to hear that 
Mr. Dallinger was about to receive considerable help in making his 
very interesting and important investigations—the sum of 100/. having 
been voted to him by the Royal Society from the Government Grant 
Fund of 40002. in order to further the progress of the observations 
upon which he was engaged. 
A vote of thanks to the Rev. W. H. Dallinger for his paper was 
unanimously carried. 
Mr. Ingpen said he was hardly in a position at a moment’s notice 
to make remarks upon the subject of the paper which were of sufficient 
value to be worth their attention. The points of his former observa- 
tions were directed to the use that should be made of generic names 
rather than to the identity or otherwise of the forms themselves, 
and the question of making use of one name for a large number of 
apparently different forms. He could not help fancying, however, 
that in a certain group there were collected together a number of 
diatoms in which, although there was the same arrangement of mark- 
ings, and therefore a good generic character, there were differences in 
other respects, and that these differences had been made use of for 
purposes which were not legitimate. For instance, the Rhomboides 
was put forward by one maker as a test for a particular objective, and 
another maker would produce a glass which would resolve a coarser 
form, also called Rhomboides. This would not be a fair test. He 
quite agreed with Mr. Dallinger that out of a great number of slides 
it was possible to find every intermediate variety between two forms, 
but what they really wanted was the establishment of something 
like type species. In the case before them they had three distinct 
forms and many varieties between them, and he quite agreed that 
the generic term of Frustulia was totally unnecessary. Yet which 
were they to take as their type form—as a test? He thought they had 
