74 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
(Walthamstow), F. W. Cooper, Ferdinand Grut (Librarian Entomological 
Society), &e. Many other literary and scientific men of eminence have also 
promised aid in various ways. At the close of the meeting, the Secretary 
requested all intending members to send their names to him at once, at 
Laurel Cottage, Buckhurst Hill. 
PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 
LinNEAN Society or Lonpon. 
December 18, 1879.— Prof. Atuman, F.R.S., President, in the chair. 
Mr. H. Seebohm was elected a Fellow of the Society. Three Associates 
were also balloted for and elected, viz., Messrs. A. D. Bartlett (Superintendent 
Zoological Gardens), N. E. Brown (Kew Herbarium), and F. H. Waterhouse 
(Librarian Zoological Society). 
Professor Allman gave a notice of some researches in connection with 
what appeared to him to be true sense organs in the Hydroids. He drew 
attention to the fact of his having some years ago (Phil. Trans. 1875) 
described the occurrence in Myriothela of certain remarkable pedunculated 
sacs which are found in the spherical capitulum of the tentacles, where they 
are in connection with a bulbous mass composed of radiating filaments. 
These filaments admit of a comparison with the rod-like bodies characteristic 
of special sense organs in higher animals; and the whole structure was 
believed by the author to represent in Myriothela an apparatus of special 
sense. For these pedunculated sacs Prof. Allman proposes the designation 
of ‘ Podocysts,” and he now believes that in more or less modified forms 
they are more widely distributed among the Hydroida than he had supposed 
when he described them in Myriothela. He would refer to the same group 
of bodies the pedunculated thread cell-like sacs which in the form of four 
pencils terminate the four lobes which surround the mouth of the planoblast 
in Podocoryne (see ‘Gymnoblastic Hydroids,’ pl. xvi, figs. 6,7). Here, 
however, instead of being immersed in the surrounding tissues, they stand 
out free from the surface and are bathed on all sides by the water. Each 
sac is furnished with a minute terminal style, as in Myriothela. Whether 
the very singular pedunculated sacs with which the tentacles are armed in 
the planoblast of Gemmaria (Hydroids, Ray Soc., pl. vii, figs. 8, 4) must be 
placed in the same general category with the “podocysts” of Myriothela 
is not at present so evident. Instead of containing, as in the latter, a single 
thread-cell-like body, the sacs of Gemmaria enclose several oval capsules, 
while the terminal style of the podocyst of Myriothela is here replaced by a 
pencil of long vibratile cilia. The peduncle of the sac, moreover, is in 
Gemmaria eminentiy contractile, at one time extending itself to a great 
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