102 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



mass appeared to be vacuolated, often very irregularly, with the 

 outlines of the vacuoles indistinct, or rather ill defined. Upon 

 long watching, the relation of these to each other might now 

 and then be seen to alter, yet there was no appearance of pulsa- 

 tion. In only those examples were any projections noticed having 

 the character of pseudopodial protrusions, and these were ex- 

 ceedingly delicate, short, and seemed ill-fitted for progression of 

 the masses in the ordinary manner of pseudopods. There was a 

 slight change of general sliape, but no complete revolution. No 

 motion was seen in the imbedded masses. Some of the masses 

 appeared to have a certain tendency to diffluence ; in others, the 

 substance was condensed into a distinct structureless cell mem- 

 brane or cell envelope. When this was ruptured, the small 

 granules or corpuscles were set free and m.oved about much after 

 the fashion of mobile zoospores. The author finds it difficult to 

 relegate these bodies to any definite place amongst either the 

 Phytozoa or Protozoa, though they fall he thinks more nearly to 

 the naked Ehizopoda. 



A paper by Mr. Kitton of Norwich, on some new species of 

 Diatomacese, was taken as read. The species described were 

 from the genera Aulacodiscus, SHctodiscus, Isthmia, Nitzscliia, 

 Tryhlionella. 



Mr. Wenham made some remarks upon the microscopical 

 efiects produced upon glass, by which the " sand-blast proces.s," 

 which was exhibited at the recent meeting of the British Asso- 

 ciation. 



IVIr. Stewart exhibited under the microscope a specimen of a 

 spermatophore of the common squid {Loligo vulgaris). 



November Uh, 1873. 

 Chakles Beooke, Esq., P.E.S., President, in the chair. 



A paper was read by the Kev. W. H. Dallinger and Dr. J. 

 Drysdale on some further researches into the Life History of the 

 Monads. 



The authors have succeeded in making out the life history of 

 three forms which they believe to be hitherto undescribed. 



The form which they specially notice is met with in vast num- 

 bers in the putrefying fluid resulting from the maceration of 

 any of the Gadidae. Its average length is about -joV o^^ ^^ ^^ 

 inch, its form oval and it is furnished with flagella. It exhibits 

 a remarkable mode of fission, by close observation of which (with 

 a 3^0 th of an inch object glass), the authors arrived at the life 

 history thus summarised. The usual method of multiplication 

 is by fission, which goes on apparently to exhaustion. Amongst 

 enormous numbers there are a few distinguished from the others 

 by a slight increase in size, and the power to swim freely. These 

 become still ; — for a time amoeboid — then round ; a small cone of 

 sarcode shoots out dividing and increasing with another part of 

 flagella. The disk splits, each sidebecomes possessed of a nuclear 



