86 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



Monocotyledon, there were regular concentric zones of circumferential 

 growth. In fact exogenous growth was found in vegetable organisms 

 of very different affinities, and was not wholly characteristic of any 

 one. It ajipeared to be a provision which was correlate with the 

 general form of the whole mass of vegetative organs, and was forced 

 upon the plant, in fact, as a necessary condition of its mechanical 

 stability. For classificatory purposes the terms exogen and endogen 

 were now almost universally abandoned, and Eay's designations, 

 which were found quite valid, were used instead. 



As to Lepidodendron and allied extinct plants, he had also no 

 doubt about the existence of an exogenous growth in them. Never- 

 theless they were undoubtedly cryptogamic. The significance of their 

 exogenous growth was not that they had anything whatever to do 

 with Dicotyledons, but that they were large growing plants with a big 

 branching crown, and hence required a stem strengthened gradually 

 by lateral increase. It seemed a waste of time to trace, in a vegetative 

 adaptation of this kind anything like genetic affinity. 



Dr. Braithwaite -ndshed to express the great pleasure he had 

 experienced in hearing the admirable paper which had been read by 

 Mr. Carruthers. He hoped it marked a new era in the work of the 

 Society, and that it might be taken as the type of a series of papers 

 confined to single subjects. We had the microscope, which was the 

 implement or tool of work, but there was little systematic use of it. 

 We wanted details of the growths both in vegetable and animal 

 kingdom ; and in consequence there were many portions of structiire 

 not at all worked out. If a few workers were to concentrate their 

 intellects, and bring their energies to bear upon some of the minuti® 

 of vegetable or animal growths, we should have a great many more 

 valuable papers before the Society. 



The President said, alluding to the remarks of Professor Dyer, 

 that when Mr. Eupert Jones and himself were working together on 

 the Foraminifera, they never drew any broad line of distinction 

 between the recent and fossil forms. In his (the President's) 

 collection, which contained five or six thousand slides of Forami- 

 nifera, the recent and fossil forms were all placed side by side. By 

 so doing he found by far the greater number of forms were still 

 extant. One type especially, the Nodosarian (an ancient but still 

 common form), ran into such an extraordinary series of forms, that 

 he had shown to Dr. Carpenter and Professor Huxley that eighteen 

 genera had been made of that form, and that characters of three 

 genera could co-exist in one single specimen. In regard to putting 

 together a great number of fossils, which have received distinct 

 names, if anyone had seen Dr. Carpenter's Introduction to the 

 Foraminifera he will have found a form called Dactylopora. He (the 

 President) had found a clue to Dactylopora in some caterpillar-shaped 

 shells from India on the common clam. In examining the French 

 tertiaries he found, besides the caterpillar-shaped forms, others that 

 were perfect rings, and that in these specimens there were two or 

 more rings conjoined. Mr. Eupert Jones and himself brought out 

 a series of papers in the ' Annals ' ; and when Dr. Carpenter took up 



