144 Dublin Microscopical Club. 
of one or two deep-sea aleyonarians. The specimens shown, 
though mounted dry, had been quite lately in strong spirit, into 
which they had, without doubt, been plunged on coming out 
of the sea. The organism, which was found in the form of thin, 
creeping, chain-like masses, consisted of a stoloniferous portion, 
from which arose a forest of trichome-like bodies all about the 
same length, and all terminating in a star of from five to six 
rays. These bodies, like the stoloniferous body-mass, were all 
formed of calcic carbonate, which, in spirit-specimens, seemed to 
be invested with a thin homogeneous plasmodic layer of a protoplas- 
mic nature. While inclined to ascribe to this form Rhizopodal affini- 
ties, Dr. Wright found it quite impossible to do this with any cer- 
tainty. With the crystal bodies in some Ascidians (in which these 
bodies form separate entities, and not, as here, part of a common 
mass) he fancied the exhibited specimens had nothing in common. 
The few remains of siliceous spicules entangled in the trichome-like 
bodies had obviously nothing to do with the strange but beautiful 
organism. 
Spirotenia acuta, Hilse, not strictly appertaining to the genus, 
though of similar habit—Mr. Archer showed some examples of a 
not uncommon, though local, unicellular Alga, doubtless that usually 
regarded as Spirotenia acuta, Hilse, but in whieh, in fact, he never 
could distinguish any trace whatever of a spiral arrangement of the 
chlorophyll-mass, so characteristic in Spirotenia condensata, Sp. 
closteridea, Sp. truncata, and Sp. parvula. No doubt the plant has the 
habit and the same kind of occurrence as those named, the young 
just- divided individuals hanging together in the same way in pairs 
in the sharply defined common investing mucous matrix. This 
plant, then, like Spirotenia obscura, so-called, he could hardly think 
was truly a Spirotenia at all, but approached more to Peniwm, the 
central axile (not parietal) mass of contents being only somewhat 
twisted. 
June 22, 1883. 
Fruit of Cliftonia —Dr. E. Perceval Wright exhibited some moun- 
ted fragments of Cliftonia pectinata, Harv., which he had quiterecently 
received from Baron F. von Miller, and which had been dredged by 
Prof. Bracebridge Wilson outside Port Phillip Head. These specimens 
showed ovate ceramidia, which were developed from the points of 
emergence of the pectinate ramelli of the frond. Harvey had never 
seen the species in fruit, but hazarded the conjecture that the cera- 
midia would prove to be, as in Claudia, formed out of contracted 
phyllodia ; but it will be seen that the actual phenomenon is diffe- 
rent from this, and adds one more to the characteristics of the genus 
Cliftonia. So far the tetrapores of this species remain undescribed. 
Section of Ailsa Crag Rock.—Prof. Hull, F.R.S., exhibited a thin 
section of the rock of which Ailsa Crag, at the entrance to the Firth 
of Clyde, is formed. It is a grey felsitic rock, composed of crystals 
