PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 149 
Quadrupeds,’ which appeared in 1874, and in collecting materials for a new 
edition of Gilbert White’s works, to which we have already referred, and 
which was published in two volumes in 1877. In his leisure moments, too, 
he found time to contribute occosionally to the pages of ‘ The Zoologist’ the 
result of his out-door observations on various topics of interest to naturalists, 
which will be fresh in the recollection of our readers. 
The position which Mr. Bell occupied in the scientific world as former 
Secretary of the Royal Society, President of the Linnean Society, and 
Professor of Zoology at King’s College, London, furnishes an example of 
the eminence which may be attained by a zealous worker in the cause 
of Zoology, having always at heart the interests of others rather than his 
own, and the advancement of a science of which he proved so able an 
exponent. Few amongst his disciples have greater cause to be grateful for 
his encouragement and assistance than the Editor of. this Journal, who 
will ever look back with mingled feelings of pleasure and regret to bright 
days passed at Selborne in the society of his kind-hearted mentor and 
friend. 
PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 
Linnean Socrety or Lonpon. 
February 19, 1880.—Wittram Carruruers, F'.R.S., Vice-Président, 
in the chair. 
Mr. Edwin Simpson Baikie was elected a Fellow of the Society. 
Mr. James Britten exhibited some specimens of Ants, a species allied 
to, if not identical with, Pheidole javana, Mayr. These insects, it seems, 
bore tunnels and galleries ramifying through the under-ground stems of 
plants of the genus Myrmecodia, which grow in the Eastern Archipelago. 
The Italian savant, Beccari, who has studied the living Myrmecodia in its 
native localities, asserts that the presence of the ants is essential to the 
plant's existence; for unless the young plants are attacked by the ants they 
soon perish. As illustrating this, Mr. Britten brought forward a series of 
examples of young and old Myrmecodia celimata and M. glabra, which had 
recently been sent home from Borneo by Mr. H. O. Forbes, and certainly 
all of these manifested the ant’s industry. This curious abode, when seen 
in longitudinal section of the swollen underground stem, resembles in some 
respects the chambered tunnels of the White Ant, Termites. 
A different example, but equally curious, was that brought forward 
by Dr. Maxwell Masters, viz., a pitcher-plant (Nepenthes bicalcarata), 
from Borneo. It seems these peculiar pitchers, when in the growing 
condition in the forest, are perfect traps to creeping insects, in consequence 
