Royal Society. 65 



rotted internally, are as tender as blotting-paper, and will scarcely 

 bear damping \vithout the hair and epidermis peeling off. Skins so 

 stuffed are very liable to injury in carriage from place to place. It 

 is this style of stuffing that makes me feel certain they could not have 

 been prepared far inland ; for no one would have adopted such an 

 inconvenient and dangerous practice if the skins had to be carried for 

 many miles on the backs of men ; and even near the coast it would 

 have been better if the skins had been spread out flat and allowed to 

 dry on both sides, and then had been packed in a small space, as is 

 usual with good collectors. The plan adopted, and the want of suf- 

 ficient attention afterwards, render his specimens of the larger Mam- 

 malia of little value for a museum. Thus the beautiful Antelope 

 {Tragelapkus euryceros) has no hoofs, and only remnants of ears and 

 tail. The Buffalo skins want hoofs and tail, and one has no horns ; 

 and many of the other skins are equally imperfect, and cannot be 

 stuffed. 



The smaller specimens of the Mammaha are in a better state ; but 

 many of these, from constant handling and want of care, are without 

 one or more limbs, &c. And I may observe that the Galago, smaller 

 monkeys, and some of the squirrels are preserved just as they are 

 usually sent from the native collector, with a stick up their tail, and 

 not as if they had been preserved by a collector who had received 

 instructions in taxidermy from M. Verreaux at Paris. 



PROCEEDINGS OF LEARNED SOCIETIES. 



ROYAL SOCIETY. 



March 21, 1861. — Major-General Sabine, Treasurer and Vice- 

 President, in the Chair. 



" On the Structure and Growth of the Tooth of Echinus" bv 

 S. James A. Saher, M.B. Lond., F.L.S., F.G.S. 



The author commences his paper by stating that the researches 

 upon which it is based were made more than four years since, and 

 then without the knowledge that the structure had been pre^-ioxisly 

 investigated by others. 



An abstract of the literature of the subject (contained in very 

 narrow limits) is then given. 



In 1841 Valentin, in Agassiz's Monograph on the Echinoderms 

 {Jnatomie des Echinodermes), published a description and many 

 good figures of the minute anatomy and growth of the Echinus-tooth. 



Professor Quekett, in his 'Lectures on Histology' (1854), referring 

 to the minute mature anatomy of the organ, states its ultimate struc- 

 ture to resemble bone and dentine of vertebrata. 



Dr. Carpenter, in his work ' On the Microscope,' speaks of the 

 tissue of the tooth as essentially of the same nature as the shell of the 

 Echinidse generally (18.56). 



Lastly, Professor W.C. WilUamson describes the subject more fully 

 Ann. if Mag, N. Hist. Ser. 3. Vol. viii. 5 



