yfsiatic Society. 59 



The deities worshipped in the islands of the Pacific he recom- 

 Miends as deserving ofinvesti'gation, no particular accouatof them 

 having Jiitheito appeared. 



Dr. MacCulloch observes, that Gen. Valancy has stated, in the 

 S7th page of his Irish Grammar (Dublin 1781), that the Persians, 

 instead of intercalating, as is customary, one day every four 

 years, to adjust their years with the course of the sun, regarded 

 no hours until they amounted to 30 days, which does not take 

 place in less than 120 years. These thirty days were then added 

 to the year (making a year of 13 months), which year was called 

 Bikreck. This mode of intercalation is said by Dr. MacCulloch 

 to bear a singular resemblance to the method of the Mexicans; 

 and he is therefore anxious to ascertain, through the medium of 

 the Society, whether there are any other parts of an astronomical 

 system to be found among the Persians, to which such a mode of 

 intercalation would seem properly to belong. 



At the last meeting, Mr. Palmer presented to the Society a 

 marine production, called the Soonge plant, obtained on the coast 

 of the newly acquired island of Singapore. Colonel Hardwicke, 

 one of the most distinguished naturalists of this country, has fa- 

 voured the Society with a description of it. He observes, that 

 in the Si/stema Natures of Linnaeus, it belongs to the natural 

 class Fermes, and to the genus Spongia. In its form it resem- 

 bles that kind of drinking-cup called a goblet, with a well defined 

 base or root, a cylindrical stem, and a capacious bowl or cup. 

 Its texture is non-elastic, composed of numerous tubes or ana- 

 stomosing cells ; the external surface or epidermis not thicker 

 than the coats of th*e tubes, and covered with innumerable stel- 

 lated pores, which under a lens appear to be the mouths of as 

 many vessels, and ramifications of tlie internal structure. The 

 root is formed of several irregular perpendicular shoots, in their 

 origin apparently cellular, but enlarged by an accumulation of 

 earthy, sandy particles, and broken in shells, and of rather a fra- 

 gile texture. The bowl is circular or sub- conical, with several 

 nodes or protul»erances, and covered both within and without 

 with circular pores of various diameter, the mouths of which are 

 closed with fine cottony fibres radiating from the circumference 

 to the centre; and the same fibrous substance extends over the 

 surface of the bowl, giviiig to it, when viewed under a lens of 

 common powers, a tomentous appearance. The stem is cylin- 

 drical, of proportional height and thickness, and of the same cel- 

 lular substance as the bowl. 



The foregoing description is taken from a specimen something 



larger than the one in the Society's museum, the dimensions be- 



ijig as follow : the greatest diameter of the bowl is at its brim 



1 7 inches ; the smallest at the bottom 7 I, in tli€ middle 12 5; the 



11 2 circuni- 



