202 



sence from town interfered with his duties. His resignation 

 was accepted with regret, and a motion to that effect was 

 carried. The resignation of Mr. G. F. Hussej as a member of 

 the Committee was accepted in similar terms, and Messrs. W. 

 J. Sowden and Gr. Gr. Mayo were elected to fill the vacancies 

 in the Committee. Mr. W. H. Selway, jun., was elected Hon. 

 Secretary. 



The Chairman brought under the notice of the Section a 

 periodical started by Mr. Joseph AYing in Victoria, and called 

 the Southern Science ^Record, which he strongly recommended. 



The Chairman stated that no representative of Cordiceps or 

 Torrubia (vegetable caterpillar) is recorded for South Aus- 

 tralia, but in digging at JSTairne he found what he believed to 

 be a Cordiceps parasitic on the larva of a beetle, and this he 

 exhibited. 



Mr. Tepper said he believed a Torriihia of a large size, some 

 four inches long, occurred near Alice Springs. 



The Chairman also showed some specimens submitted to him 

 by a gentleman in Tasmania, w^ho believed them to be slugs. 

 They have a general resemblance to the liver-fluke, but there 

 are two little tentacles springing from the upper surface. He 

 could not claim them as slugs, but thought they might turn out 

 to be land Planaria. 



Mr. Gr. Beazley, the Museum taxidermist and articulator, 

 then gave some practical illustrations in the art of preparing 

 birds for stuffing. 



Third Etexi]s-& Meeting — Tttesdat, Jijis-e 23, 1885. 



Mr. Gr. Collis presided. There was a small attendance. 

 Mr. Grasby exhibited about forty-four varieties of mosses and 

 lichens from the banks of the Kiver Onkaparinga at Oakbank. 

 They were collected by the local school children in the course 

 of an outdoor excursion under the guidance of Mr. Grasby. 



Mr. Tepper exhibited a lampglass with marks upon it, giving 

 it the appearance of being cracked, when in reality it was per- 

 fectly sound. The seeming flaws were in his opinion formed 

 either by minute fungi or the action of saline matter from the 

 dampness of the straw in which the glass was packed. Mr. 

 Tepper then gave his lecture on " Local Orchids," and, with 

 the assistance of diagrams, explained the peculiar nature and 

 beauties of the plants, pointing out the structure of the flowers, 

 which in all their multifarious variety exhibited the same 

 general ground plan. He said there were thousands of species 

 distributed over almost the whole land surface of the earth. 

 In Australia 255 species in forty-six genera were recorded by 

 Sir F. von Mueller, of which seventeen, with fifty-three species, 



