30 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [Jan 



Quekctt Club. — The 371st meeting- was held on Friday, 

 Oct. 20. Mr. R. T. Lewis presented a series of prepara- 

 tions of cattle ticks he had mounted from material sent by 

 Mr. C. J. Pond, of New South Wales, and on which he 

 made a communication at the April meeting-. Mr. Curties 

 exhibited a number of photo-micrographs of low-power ob- 

 jects with the Kromscope. Messrs. Watson exhibited their 

 new educational or school microscope, with a well-made 

 coarse, but no fine, adjustment, and their "Holoscopie" 

 eyepieces with an adjustment to render them either under 

 or over-corrected for use with achromatic or apochro- 

 matic objectives. Mr. Nelson was afraid that in inexperi- 

 enced hands, at least, these eyepieces would introduce 

 greater aberrations than those they were intended to cor- 

 rect, as it was a difficult and delicate matter to adjust an 

 eyepiece to varying objects. Mr. Nelson made some re- 

 marks on a series of Reichert's microscopes shown in the 

 room, with improvements inthe fine and other adjustments. 

 Also a new form of double-rack coarse movement, which 

 he had devised to obviate loss of time or backlash in focuss- 

 ing, fitted for him by Messrs. Watson to one of their stu- 

 dent's microscopes, and a fine adjustment to the substage 

 of the same instrument. He considered this latter adjust- 

 ment almost indispensable when immersion condensers of 

 high aperture were employed. Mr. J. G. Waller read a 

 paper on "An Undescribed British Sponge of the Genus 

 Raphiodesma Bewerbank," illustrated by figures and by 

 drawings. 



NEW PUBLICATIONS. 



Moulds, Mildews and Mashrooms. — This new book 

 starts by showing the relations of fungi to other plants, 

 adopting largely the general arrangement of Engler and 

 Prantl. Underwood recognizes : I. Thallophyta, under 

 which (a) algae and (b) fungi are placed. II. Archegoniata, 

 (a) the mosses and their allies, (b) ferns and their allies. 

 III. Spermaphyta, the (a) Gymnospermae, (b) Monoco- 

 tyledoneae, (c) Dicotyledoneae. It is indeed gratifying that 



