EDINBURGH. 39 



as well as I could. I also became friends with some 

 of the Newhaven fishermen, and sometimes accom- 

 panied them when they trawled for oysters, and thus 

 got many specimens. But from not having had any 

 regular practice in dissection, and from possessing 

 only a wretched miscroscope, my attempts were very 

 poor. Nevertheless I made one interesting little dis- 

 covery, and read, about the beginning of the year 1826, 

 a short paper on the subject before the Plinian Society. 

 This was that the so-called ova of Flustra had the 

 power of independent movement by means of cilia, 

 and were in fact larvae. In another short paper I 

 showed that the little globular bodies which had been 

 supposed to be the young state of Fucus loreus were 

 the egg-cases of the worm-like Pontobdella muricata. 



The Plinian Society was encouraged and, I believe, 

 founded by Professor Jameson : it consisted of stu- 

 dents and met in an underground room in the Uni- 

 versity for the sake of reading papers on natural 

 science and discussing them. I used regularly to 

 attend, and the meetings had a good effect on me in 

 stimulating my zeal and giving me new congenial 

 acquaintances. One evening a poor young man got 

 up, and after stammering for a prodigious length of 

 time, blushing crimson, he at last slowly got out the 

 words, " Mr. President, I have forgotten what I was 

 going to say." The poor fellow looked quite over- 

 whelmed, and all the members were so surprised that 

 no one could think of a word to say to cover his 

 confusion. The papers which were read to our little 

 society were not printed, so that I had not the satis- 



