PROCEEDINGS OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 259 
of the zocecium,—a view which may be regarded as too exclusive. He 
(Professor Allman) had, not long since, an opportunity of examining the 
remarkable organism known as Cyphonantes, a singular little free swimming 
animal found in the open sea. It is of a compressed pyramidal shape, its 
soft parts being included in a bivalve shell in the manner of certain 
Entomostraca. It has an organization of considerable complexity, being 
provided with a complete alimentary canal, with accessory glands, and with 
certain organs of extremely enigmatical import. Schneider attempted to 
show that Cyphonantes was the larva of a polyzoon, and he announced the 
startling fact that before its transformation into the adult, it becomes 
totally disorganised, every trace of structure disappearing, and the entire 
animal becoming reduced to a homogeneous mass of protoplasm; and this, 
notwithstanding the complex structure of Cyphonantes,—more complex, 
indeed, than the German zoologist had imagined. It is in this homogeneous, 
structureless mass of protoplasm that the new polypide arises, and the 
whole becomes then metamorphosed into the form of the adult. Strange 
as this history may appear, it has been to a certain extent confirmed by the 
researches of Nitsch and Joliet, and he (the President) felt that, in the face 
of the evidence afforded by those researches, he would not be justified in 
still urging the objections which, chiefly on theoretical grounds, he had 
formerly offered. Finally, his address took up the question of “ Indi- 
viduality,” or the relation to the polyzoal colony, and he maintained, in the 
somewhat modified form resulting from the researches of Nitsch, the view 
which he had long ago brought forward, and which has since been generally 
accepted by recent investigators, namely, that the zocecium or cell in which 
the polypide is lodged must be regarded as having a zooidal individuality, 
independently of the polypide, which has also a zooidal individuality of its 
own, and that the two thus form a compound element which becomes 
associated with similar ones in order to form the colony. This compound 
animal is thus composed of two zooidal individuals,—zocecium and polypide ; 
on the zocecium devolving the functions of sexual and non-sexual reproduc- 
tion, and on the polypide that of nutrition. 
At the conclusion of his Address, Prof. Allman called attention to some 
living examples of Tree Frogs (Hyla arborea) which he had obtained in 
the South of Europe. Those now exhibited to the Fellows convincingly 
showed the remarkable change of colour which this species of Frog is 
known to possess, some of them being green, others bright blue. This 
change of hue is due to certain pigment-corpuscles, the precise nature of 
which Prof. Allman is at present engaged in investigating. 
The Report on publications was read by the Secretary, and that on the 
balance-sheet by Dr. R. C. A. Prior. Afterwards the Treasurer (Dr. J. 
Gwyn Jeffreys) read his statement of the accounts, &c., of the past financial 
year, 1877. This showed a highly satisfactory result, a balance of £46 13s. 
