2686 The Zoologist — Joly, 1871. 



Editors. ' The Canadian Entomologist,' No. 12 ; by the Editor. ' The 

 Silk Supply Journal,' No. 10 ; by the Silk Supply Association. 



Exhibitions, dc. 



The Secretary read the following letter (dated May 9th), received from 

 the Rev. L. Jenyns, of Bath, concerning the newspaper reports, alluded to 

 at the last Meeting, as to the supposed showers of insects, or other 

 organisms, occurring at that city : — 



" Seeing in the ' Athenaeum ' that mention was made at the last Meeting 

 of the Entomological Society of a ' so-called storm of insects ' that had fallen 

 lately at Bath on two occasions, with reference to the inaccuracy of news- 

 paper reports in scientific matters, I venture to send, for the information of 

 the Members of the Society, a statement of so much as I know respecting 

 the phenomenon in question. I did not witness it, indeed I was not in 

 Bath at the time ; but a person who keeps a small inn neai' the Midland 

 Rail way -station, where the phenomenon was observed, on my requesting to 

 see them, showed me some of the organisms still alive, which he had kept 

 in a tumbler of water since the time of their falling. This was several days 

 after the occurrence of the storm, and, having already parted with a great 

 many specimens, he would not allow me to take one away with me for 

 closer examination at home. But I saw enough to satisfy me as to their 

 nature, if not to identify the exact species. They were not, as may be 

 supposed, true insects, nor wei'e they Entomostraca, as Professor Westwood 

 thought they might perhaps have been, but forms of Infusoria, more 

 especially of the genus Vibrio, large numbers of which were present, some 

 swimming freely in the water, but the greater part congregated in spherical 

 masses about the size of a small marble, each mass being surrounded 

 by a semitransparent filmy sort of skin or envelope, through which the 

 minute worms might be readily discerned with a pocket lens, tangled 

 together and in a nearly quiescent state. I beheve them to have been the 

 Vibrio undula of Miiller ('Auiraalcula Infusoria,' p. 40, tab. vi. figs. 

 4 — 0, 1785), or some very closely-allied species ; and his figure gives an 

 exact representation of the appearance of the congregated masses of worms 

 as presented in this instance, this habit being characteristic of the species. 

 He speaks of the masses being sometimes collected round the branchlets of 

 a confei-va (as given in one of his figures). The surrounding skin, which 

 I have alluded to above, I suspect to have been nothing more than a pellicle 

 of scum, &c., deposited from stagnant water, perhaps rendered thick by 

 evaporation. I was told there had been a sudden squall of wind before there 

 came on a heavy rain, and my idea is that these organisms must have been 

 hfted up by the force of the wind, acting in a gyratory manner, from some 

 shallow pool in the neighbourhood, reduced perhaps to little more than 

 a large puddle, in the centre of which, from the drying up of the water 



