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SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 
Linnean Society or Lonpon. 
November 4.—WitiiaM CarrurtHers, F'.R.S., President, in the chair. 
The President, in welcoming the Fellows to the first meeting of the 
new session, made some remarks on the work which had been done during 
the recess, and in a passing tribute commented on the loss which Science 
and the Society had sustained by the decease of Mr. G. Busk, a former 
Secretary and Vice-President of the Society. 
The President afterwards drew attention to stained specimens, under 
the microscope, of phosphorescent organisms (chiefly Ceratium tripos) 
obtained by him in the Firth of Clyde in September last. 
Mr. John Murray, in commenting thereon, observed that near Cumbrae 
Islands an immense quantity of yellow material containing these organisms 
in abundance was obtained at every haul of the net. He alluded to his 
own observation of the species in long chains in the ocean (Narr. Voy. of 
‘Challenger’), and to Klebs’ opinion of Ceratium being a genus of 
unicellular Alge, and not an infusorian animal, as ordinarily inferred. 
Dr. F. Day exhibited a Salmon Parr twenty months old, raised at 
Howietown from parents which had never visited the sea. Dr. Day also 
showed some coloured drawings made in October, 1886, at Howietown, of 
hybrids raised there. One of these was a cross between the American 
Charr and the Loch Leven Trout, another a cross between the American 
and the British Charr, and a third between the last-mentioned hybrid and 
the Loch Leven Trout; all these were fertile. 
Mr. F. P. Pascoe exhibited one of the round olive-green balls from 
Sicily, formed by the action of the sea on fragments of the Posidonia 
caulinia, and reduced after a few days’ exposure toa flat cake-like body 
densely covered with minute crystals of salt. He also exhibited examples 
of a remarkable mode of growth of the acorn-shell (Balanus). It would 
appear that several individual animals had united their shells to form a 
tube common to them; the outer valves of each individual also had more 
or less lengthened, forming a series of irregular subsidiary tubes radiating 
from the apex of the primary one. 
Mr. Edward C. Bousfield read a paper ‘‘ On the Natural History of the 
Genus Dero.” After a summary of the literature, and remarks on the 
confusion existent in the nomenclature, he showed that Naias digitata of 
Miller cannot now be identified, and the specific name should accordingly 
be rejected. A full account is given of the habits of the Deros, and the 
best methods of observing them; the points in which they differ from the 
Naides were pointed out, and the chief peculiarity of the genus described, 
