45S Linnean Society. 
June 20.—Dr. Brewster, in a letter to the President, gave an 
account of his experiments on the eyes of fishes, by which it 
eppears that the crystalline lens of fishes, according to its den- 
sity, is capable of receiving the property of double refracting ery- 
stals, the same as glass, by compression. Dr. B. related a num- 
ber of experiments which he made on the eyes of fishes, and their 
effects on cofours ; from which he concludes that one part of a 
fish’s eye experiences mechanical dilatation, and another mecha- 
nical contraction. He thinks that the chief cause why so little 
progress has been made in auginenting our knowledge of the eye 
and of vision, is owing to an excessive confidence in a supposed 
analogy between optic glasses and the crystalline lens. 
Sir Everard Home, Bart. furnished a supplement to a former 
paper on the skeleton of a peculiar kind of fish in Mr. Bullock’s 
Museum. | Two geutlemen having procured parts of this singu- 
lar animal in different places of the country, were so kind as to 
submit them to Sir E.’s inspection ; in consequence of which he 
can now state with confidence, what he before only conjectured, 
that the animal must have been a fish, as the bones which are 
wanting to complete Mr, Bullock’s specimen have been partly 
discovered in Dorsetshire, and part elsewhere. He has now 
made drawings of the perfect skeleton, to illustrate this and his 
preceding paper on the subject. He noticed particulariy the cha- 
racteristic differences between the ribs of land and sea animals ; 
the former being joined to the vertebree, in order to rise and fall 
in breathing; the latter being fixed, and adapted to support the 
sides against the lateral pressure of, and suit the fish’s motion 
through, the water. 
LINNEAN SOCIETY. 
Friday, May 24.—On this day the Anniversary Meeting of 
the Linnean Society of London was held at the Society’s house 
in Gerrard-street, Soho, for the Election of a Council and Of- 
ficers for the present year, when the following Members were 
declared to be of the Council, viz. 
Sir James Edward Smith, Kut. | William Horton Lloyd, Esq, 
M.D. William George Maton, M.D, 
Samuel, Lord Bishop of Car- | Daniel Moore, Esq, 
lisle. Rev. Thomas Rackett. 
Edward Forster, Esq. Joseph Sabine, Esq. 
George Bellas Greenough, Esq. John, Lord Bishop of Salisbury, 
William Kent, Esq. Edward, Lord Stanley. 
Aylmer Bourke Lambert, Esq. | Thomas Thomson, Esq. 
And the following were declared to be the Officers for the 
present year, viz. 
Sir James Edward Smith, Knt. M.D. President. 
~ 
Samuel, 
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