316 
Mr. Carruthers Osmundites Dowkeri. The specimen was ex- 
tremely interesting, as showing copiously contained in the cells 
the silicified casts of starch-granules, as well as being traversed 
here and there by well-preserved jointed filaments, most probably 
those of the mycelium of a fungal growth. For detailed descrip- 
tion and figures, see ‘ Proceedings Geol. Soce.,’ 1870, p. 349. 
As further examples of a locomotive power, to say the least, 
without visible motory organs, Mr. Archer exhibited numerous 
pretty specimens of that elegant, though common, little organism 
Spirillum volutans. The little moniliform chains of which it is 
composed keep rapidly urging themselves along, with their well- 
known undulatory and fitful serpentine motion. An additional 
example of the same apparent phenomenon was prettily presented 
by another minute organism, not as yet identifiable, which oc- 
curred in a gathering made in the County Westmeath in great 
numbers. These formed short, cylindrical, minute bodies, with 
rotundate-truncate ends, of a light brownish colour and a gra- 
nulated or roughened surface, which very rapidly swam about in 
the water, in variously curved courses, each revolving quickly on 
its longitudinal axis as it progressed, but no flagellum or any 
such motory organ could be discerned. Sometimes one of these 
poked its way into a vacated carapace of Dinobryon sertularia, 
where, its onward progress being barred, it maintained a rapid 
spinning on its longitudinal axis. Of course, it cannot be denied 
but that flagella may be present, though baffling detection. 
Mr. Archer drew the attention of the Club to a rough sketch 
of what there could be but little if any doubt was a peculiar con- 
dition of Syncrypta volvor (Ehr.). When he first encountered, 
some time since, this puzzling looking object in a gathering in 
which it occurred in rather considerable quantity, for a short 
time he had thought that he must have had before him some form 
of undescribed Rhizopod, not a little calling to mind Haeckel’s 
Myzodictyum at first glance. Here were a number of sarcode- 
looking little masses of irregular figure grouped together in 
clusters, each of these giving off several irregular, rather slender 
and sometimes long, slightly tapering, colourless processes ; 
these, indeed, to all intents and purposes, might be denominated 
pseudopodia, still any change of outline or extension was but 
slow. Under a low power it looked as if the whole represented 
a group of minute rhizopodous organisms, these more or less 
united by inosculations of the slender pseudopodia ; however, on 
examination by a higher power, it did not appear that these pro- 
cesses were really mutually inosculated, or only slightly so, still 
they had all the aspect of a common group or colony of the same 
rhizopodous form. But a further examination under the higher 
power soon showed apparently beyond doubt that these seeming 
Rhizopoda were nothing less than so many of the disassociated 
constituent monads of a Syncrypta-colony, thus remarkably mo- 
dified. But though every conceivable intermediate phase between 
both did not become revealed, yet enough was evidenced, he 
