AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 457 



Davidson, D. Holton, Veeder, Pierson, of Toronto, Canada, Judge Sco- 

 ville, John W. Chambers, Alanson Nash, John Campbell, Finell, Breisach, 

 Henry Fitz, Dr. Deck, Lawton, Engineer Stetson, and others — 53 mem- 

 bers in all. 



Robert L. Pell in the chair. Henry Meigs, Secretary. 



The Secretary read the following extracts from Lindley's Vegetable 

 Kingdom, viz. ; 



DlATO'MAGEM—{Dii:isio7is.) 



Crystalline, angular, fragmentary bodies, brittle, multiplying by spon- 

 taneous separation. They are generally bounded by right lines — rarely 

 by curved lines — flat, stiff, brittle, usually nestling in slime, uniting into 

 various forms, and then parting again. Rocks moistened, hot-house 

 glasses, walls in shade, hard paths in gardens, in damp places after rain, 

 show a green mucous slime, which contains algals in their simplest state of 

 organization. Bory de St. Vincent called them chaodineae — a chaos — a 

 provisional creation — assuming afterwards various forms, according to the 

 nature of the corpuscles which penetrate it or are developed in it. It may 

 be said to originate animal and vegetable existence. This mucus some- 

 times agglomerates and floats over water ; becomes green by forming inside 

 of each corpuscle, vegetable corpuscles. They often have a milky or a 

 ferruginous appearance, when, by the microscope, we find it filled with ani- 

 malcules, the navicularete, lunulinaj, and stylaria3, in such close crowds as 

 to be unable to swim. Agardh calls them plants ; Kiitzing says that they 

 are as much animal as vegetable. That at all events the achnanth ^down 

 flowers,) gomphonema, (like pegs,) exilaria, (thin,) fragiluria, meloseira, 

 schizonema, micromega, and berkleya, are at least plants if frustulia, cym- 

 bella, navicula, surirella, &c., are animalcules. He has recently ascer- 

 tained that the frustules of micromega are metamorphosed into green glo- 

 bular spores. Dr. Dickie, of Aberdeen, has observed something of the 

 same kind. Mr. Ralfs, who has devoted great attention to these doubtful 

 creatures, observes that one division of them, the cymbellese, rapidly be- 

 comes putrid, have a silicous covering ; consequently their forms do not 

 alter in drying, and are not destroyed by fire. When perfect, their color 

 is brownish, but not unfrequently becomes greenish on drying. Their fig- 

 ures are usually either quadrilateral or prism, with streaks and dots. The 

 desmideae putrify very slowly ; have no silicious coat. When perfect they 

 have generally a herbaceous green color. Ralfs recognizes the universal 

 diffusion of starch among the desmideae. He thinks they are undoubtedly 

 vegetable. The genera noted are 45, and the species enumerated some ten 

 years ago, 457. Some of these supposed chaonidae turned out on exami- 

 nation by Berkley, to be eggs of insects 



Nest in order, confervaeea, fucaceaj, ceremaniacese, or rose tangles ; 

 genera 88, species 682, according to Endlicher. Characeae water plants, 

 fungus genera, 598, species, 4,000 ; lichen genera 58, species, 2,400. 



