Royal Society. 285 



complete list of the localities of our ferns. The latter author has 

 made very similar blunders in printing the singular names of these 

 places, and those who are not intimately acquainted with the Snow- 

 donian mountains may well be excused for transcribing them incor- 

 rectly. 



No notice is taken of Polypodium alpestre and its ally or variety 

 P. flexile, in the place which it might have been expected to occupy ; 

 but probably Mr. Johnson intends to adopt Mr. Newman's genus 

 Pseudathyrium. Neither do we find any remark upon the Lastrea 

 uliginosa of Newman, which, if not a variety of L. cristata, as some 

 suppose, should find a place between that plant and L. spinulosa. 



The plates bear out the remark in the Prospectus, that " the figures 

 will be all accurately drawn and engraved from the respective plants, 

 and thus many errors in identity and general detail, which had un- 

 avoidably occurred in ' English Botany,' will be rectified." Still, there 

 are manifest traces of the ' Eng. Bot.' plates being before the artist 

 when preparing those now issued. 



We look forward with much interest to the publication of the suc- 

 cessive parts, and shall probably again notice the work when it is 

 further advanced. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 



June 15, 1854. — The Earl of Rosse, President, in the Chair. 



" Contributions to the Anatomy of the Brachiopoda." By Thomas 

 H. Huxley, F.R.S. 



In the course of the dissection of certain Brachiopoda with which 

 I have recently been engaged, I have met with so many peculiarities 

 which are unnoticed in the extant and received accounts of their 

 anatomy, that although the pressure of other duties prevents me from 

 attempting to work out the subject with any degree of completeness 

 for the present, I yet gladly avail myself of the opportunity of com- 

 municating a few of the more important results at which I have 

 arrived, in the hope that they may find a place in the Proceedings of 

 the Royal Society. 



My investigations were principally made upon Rhynchonella psit- 

 tacea, for specimens of which I am indebted to Prof. Edward Forbes, 

 while Dr. Gray obligingly enabled me to compare them with Wald- 

 heimia flavescens and with Lingula. 



1 . The Alimentary Canal ofTerebratulidce. — Professor Owen, in both 

 his earlier and his later memoirs on the anatomy of the Terebratulidas, 

 describes at length the manner in which the intestine, as he states, 

 terminates on the right side between the lobes of the mantle. 



On the other hand, Mr. Hancock has declared himself unable to 

 observe at this point any such anal aperture, and concludes from his 

 own observations that the latter is situated on the ventral surface of 

 the animal in the middle line, just behind the insertion of the great 



