4 TO Royal Society. 



decide for himself on the expediency of consulting them. But in 

 the present case, no such object is in view. Mr. Grant's book takes 

 its place among standard works from its first appearance, by com- 

 mon consent ; partly on account of the vacancy of the field, but 

 more because the author is an historian from original materials, of 

 good knowledge, good judgement, and good style. He is no strong 

 partisan of anything or anybody ; and he gives such accounts as 

 those of the dispute between Flamsteed and Newton, or the discus- 

 sion upon the discovery of Neptune, in a manner which inclines us 

 to feel safe in his hands upon matters in which we have not con- 

 sulted his originals. The work is brought up to the present time 

 throughout ; and we should have given a more detailed account of 

 it, if we had not felt quite confident that it must, and speedily, not 

 only be in the hands of all who are already interested in the history 

 of astronomy, but awake much attention to that subject in others. 



LXVII. Proceedings of Learned Societies. 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 



[Continued from p. 392.] 

 March 4, \ PAPER was read, entitled, " On the Anatomy of 

 1852. -^*- Doris." By Albany Hancock, Esq., and Dennis 

 Embleton, M.D., Lecturer on Anatomy and Physiology in the New- 

 castle-on-Tyne College of Medicine, in connection with the Univer- 

 sity of Durham. Communicated by Professor E. Forbes, F.R.S. 



The authors have proposed to themselves to describe the anatomy 

 of the three genera typical of the three groups of the Nudibranchiate 

 Mollusca. An account of the structure of Eolis has already appeared 

 in the ' Annals of Natural History.' 



A detailed description is given of the anatomy of Doris, the fol- 

 lowing species of which have been examined, and are referred to in 

 the paper: D. tuberculata, Auct., D. tuberculata,\ erany, D.Johnston?, 

 D. tomentosa, D. repanda, D. coccinea, D. verrucosa, D. pilosa, 

 D. bilamellata, D. aspera, and D. depressa ; but D. tuberculata of 

 English authors has been taken as the type of the genus, and the 

 standard of comparison for the rest. 



Digestive System. — The mouth in all the species is a powerful 

 muscular organ, provided with a prehensile tongue beset with siliceous 

 spines, which when the tongue is fully developed, are arranged in a 

 median and two lateral series. Certain species possess, besides, a 

 prehensile spinous collar on the buccal lip, occasionally associated 

 with a rudimentary horny jaw. The mode of development of the 

 lingual spines is shown to be the same as that of the teeth of the 

 Vertebrata. 



The oesophagus varies in length ; in some it is dilated at the top, 

 forming a crop ; in others it is simply enlarged previously to enter- 

 ing the liver mass. The stomach is of two forms ; one, as in D. tuber- 

 culata, is very large, receiving the oesophagus behind, and giving off 

 the intestine in front, and lying in advance of the liver ; the other is 



