PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETILS. 229 
tendency to deepen, as the limpets apparently graze again over a grooved 
surface. The total amount of chalk thus annually denuded by all these 
creatures must be very considerable, though what is removed by an 
individual limpet appears insignificant. It was explained how mechanically, 
and not by any chemical agency, the limpets sink pits, which are often 
basin-shaped hollows, considerably below the level of the rim of the 
animal's shell. 
May 2, 1878.—Dr. R. C. A. Prior, F.L.S., in the chair. 
The following gentlemen were elected Fellows of the Society :—M. César 
Chambre, Broad Street, E.C.; and Thomas Comber, Esq., Redcliffe, 
Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire. 
The Foreign Members elected by ballot to fill the vacancies of those 
deceased during last year were :—Teodoro Carnel, Professor of Botany and 
Director of the Botanic Garden, Pisa; Dr. Ernest Cosson, of Paris; 
Dr. George Engelman, of St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.; Dr. Edouard Fenzl, 
Professor of Botany at the University and Director of the Botanic Garden 
at Vienna; and Dr. Julius -Sachs, Professor of Botany at the University 
and Director of the Botanic Garden, Wirzburg—all highly distinguished 
for their original researches and published labours, chiefly on Physiological 
and Systematic Botany. 
There were no zoological papers read at this meeting, but a memorandum 
in a letter from the Rev. H. H. Higgins, of Liverpool, was laid before the 
Society. In this he says:—‘‘I enclose a rough drawing of what I take 
to be a Tubularian Hydroozoon allied to Clava. The drawing (exhibited) is 
of natural size. The specimen itself came into my hands in a curious way. 
Not long ago I saw, in a Berlin Catalogue, a work on New Zealand 
Zoophytes, which, with several other books, J ordered. The former turned 
out to be, not a printed volume, but a collection of dried specimens, one of 
which is the subject of the drawing. They were labelled, ‘ Northern Island, 
New Zealand, Andrew Sinclair, M.D.; from William Gourlie, Glasgow.’ 
Besides the object in question, among the specimens are a few fine things, 
one of which is an arborescent Hydractinia, which Mr. Thomas Higgin, of 
Huyton, is describing. Ifthe enclosed drawing of the Hydroozoon represents 
a Clava, it is of enormous size, though in its dry compressed state I cannot 
say much about it. The hydranth is club-shaped, the hydrocaulus about 
ten inches—in another specimen some sixteen inches—in length. The 
tentacles are squamiform, covering the hydranth. The sporosacs are 
absent, being, I suppose, deciduous. There was a Tubularian Hydroozoon, 
found by the ‘Challenger,’ about four feet in length, a short notice of 
which, if I remember aright, appeared in ‘ Nature.’” 
Mr. J. C. Galton called attention to an object of about the size of a 
split hazel, obtained in a garden near Barking Priory, and which was 
‘ 
