46 Lintuean Society. 



chemical elements, as announced by Professor Mitscherlich, in his 

 Memoirs communicated to the Royal Academy of Berlin in the year 

 18iy,and to the Royal Academy of Stockholm in 1821, and modified 

 and extended in his subsequent writings, is one of high importance 

 in crystallography, and has received from M. Mitscherlich himself, 

 and from a variety of other crystallographic and chemical re- 

 searches and analyses by others up to the present time, such sub- 

 sequent elucidation and confirmation as now to form a very consi- 

 derable branch of science, and one in which further progress is 

 confidently to be expected, and indeed is continually making ; and 

 that, however opinions may differ as to the extent to which his ori- 

 ginal views are borne out, and whatever degree of obscurity may 

 yet be regarded as hanging about some parts of the doctrine itself, 

 or its general applicability, it has already furnished the means 

 of grouping together avast number of facts under general laws, and 

 afforded reasonable solutions of a great many difficulties both in 

 chemistry and mineralogy. 



" Your Committee are further of opinion, that the facts discovered 

 by Professor Mitscherlich, of the difference of expansibility, by heat, 

 of crystallized bodies in different directions, is a highly important 

 step in pyrometry, and is sufficiently established by himself, by de- 

 cisive experiments, to leave no doubt of its reality; while the cor- 

 responding changes in the optical properties of diaphanous cry- 

 stals, produced by the same cause, appear to them important ac- 

 cessions to our knowledge of the properties of light and the relation 

 between it and crystallized matter. 



" Finally, your Committee have no hesitation in stating it as their 

 opinion, that, should the Council of the Royal Society think proper, 

 now or at any subsequent period, to mark their estimation of these 

 services rendered to science by a Medal, such reward would be fully 

 justified by their intrinsic merit and value." 



For these discoveries your Medal has been awarded to M. Mits- 

 cherlich, with the full confidence that the approbation of the Royal 

 Society of England thus expressed, cannot fail of animating a man 

 of science in a distant country to renewed and vigorous exertion in 

 the prosecution of a work that has procured for him such a high 

 distinction. 



LINNiT-AN SOCIETY. 



Nov. 3rd and 1 7th. — A. B. Lambert, Esq. V. P. in the Chair. Read 

 A Description of Filaria ForJiculcB, by Mr. Benj. Maund, F.L.S., 

 accompanied with a specimen. This is an intestinal worm found in 

 the Earwig ; sometimes 2 or 3 in one individual, each not less than 

 three inches long; the whole cavity of the abdomen, and in some in- 

 stances part of the trunk being filled with it. When removed, they 

 live two or three hours in water, but die immediately in the at- 

 mosphere. 



A communication from J. E. Bowman, Esq. F.L.S. was also read : 

 On the Parasitical Connection of Lathrcea squamaria, and the pecu- 

 liar structure of its subterranean leaves. 



After 



