Linnaan Society. — Royal Astronomical Society. 381 



Grant, Mr. Gray, Mr. Owen, the late Mr. Telfair and Mr. Yarrell, 

 stand conspicuous ; and that the number of new species, and (what are 

 almost equally valuable) species newly characterized was 247, and that 

 of species on whichj detailed anatomical observations were commu- 

 nicated 26". 



LINNiEAN SOCIETY. 



April 1, 1834. — A paper was read, entitled, " Observations on the 

 Metamorphosis of Insects;" by Edward Newman. 



Mr. Newman refers the whole of the wonderful transformations in 

 insects to that tendency to continual decay and reparation observable 

 in all organized beings : he considers that in this portion of the cre- 

 ation it has become a constant change of skin. Instead of admitting 

 the existence of the four distinct states of egg, larva, pupa and imago, 

 he contends that there are only three, that of pupa being frequently 

 wanting; and when it does exist, being merely the matured larva state 

 waiting its final ecdysis. The three states he considers to be these : 

 the egg, or foetal state; the larva, or adolescent state; and the imago, 

 or adult state. Mr. Newman terms the true or winged insects 

 Tetraptera, and divides them into these four groups : Tetraptera 

 Amorpha, containing the classes Lepidoptera and Diptera, in which 

 the penultimate bears no resemblance to the final state; Tetraptera 

 Necromorpha (Hymenoptera and Coleoptera), in which the penulti- 

 mate resembles the final state, but appears as though dead; Tetra- 

 ptera Isomorpha (Orthoptera and Hemiptera), in which all the states 

 have the same shape and appearance ; and Tetraptera Anisomorpha 

 (Neuroptera), in which the metamorphosis is various. 



ROYAL ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY. 



March 14, 1834. — The following communications were read : — 



I. On the Satellites of Uranus. By Sir J. Herschel. 



This paper, dated from Portsmouth, on the eve of the author's de- 

 parture for the Cape of Good Hope in November last, contains an 

 investigation of the motions of two of the satellites of Uranus. 



Notwithstanding the remarkable peculiarities presented by the 

 satellites of this planet, in the great inclinations of their orbits to the 

 orbit of the primary planet, and their retrograde motions, they have 

 never been observed, or even seen (so far as the author is aware), 

 except in the telescope with which they were originally discovered. 

 In a paper of the late Sir William Herschel, published in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions for 1815, and containing the whole series of his 

 observations on these satellites, the existence of at least two of them 

 appears to be placed beyond a doubt. But since that time the un- 

 favourable situation of the planet, to the south of the equator, has 

 opposed a serious obstacle to their re-observation, even with tele- 

 scopes of the highest optical capacity. Since the year 1828, the 

 author has made repeated observations upon two of the satellites 

 with the 20-feet reflector at Slough, from which he has deduced an 

 approximate determination of their orbits. 



There being no eclipses of these satellites, and the measurement 

 of their distances from the planet with any approach to exactness 



