51 



This conception of the poem is extremely simple and natural. It 

 does no violence to any part of the original, requires no forced inter- 

 pretation, no change in the text ; it is not open to any objections on the 

 score of inconsistency, improbability, or obscurity ; and I, therefore, 

 unhesitatingly recommend it to general acceptation. 



The second paper of the night was then read, — 



■ UPON THE "SPHCEROBOLUS STELLATUS," 

 By the Eev. H. H. HIGGINS, M.A., V.P. 



The author exhibited a drawing of this jjlaut, in various stages of de- 

 velopment, the several processes of which the reverend gentleman had 

 had an opportunity of witnessing. He had found the plant, a minute 

 species of fungus, in the neighbourlioodof Huyton Quarry, on the 20th 

 of September. It was growing on the flat surface of a stump, near 

 the gi-ound. He took it home, with a portion of the wood on which it 

 was growing, and placed it on a bed of damp sand, covered with a 

 glass shade. A cluster of similar plants soon sprang up, and 

 the mode of growth in a single specimen was this: — At first 

 appears a little patch of reticulated fibres, the centre of which be- 

 comes elevated from beneath by the growth of the young plant, which 

 at length burst through the web and assumes the colour and size of a 

 grain of mustard seed. Subsequently it becomes egg shaped, and 

 attains a height of about a line. A star-like fissure now divides the 

 apex of the plant into five or six equal segments, which fall back like 

 the petals of a Hower and discover the inner or lining membrane, 

 resembling a minute egg cup, and containing a siwrangium, or ball of 

 spores. At the period of maturity this inner membrane suddenly 

 turns itself inside out, with an audible snap, projecting the sporan- 

 gium to a distance of several inches. The inside of the glass shade 

 used as a cover for the plants became spotted with forty or fifty of 

 these sporangia, which had been ejected with such force as to flatten 

 them against the glass. 



A portion of the spore pulp, under a high magnifier, exhibited innu- 

 merable minute particles, displaying with great activity the ordinary 

 Brownian movements. When the pulp was taken from an unripe 

 sporangium there were also to be seen, by the aid of iodine and a 

 magnifier with very good power of definition, certain other bodies of a 

 linear or slenderly oblong shape, many times the size of the moving 

 particles, and quite pellucid. These appeared to be attacked and 

 entered by the particles, but whether the linear bodies afterwards be- 

 came developed into perfect spores the observer was not able to ascertain. 



