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Dr. A. Smith Woodward. The carcases- of these animals 

 appeared to have found their way into an old marsh 

 saturated with petroleum, which had completely preserved 

 them. The photographs and specimens had been received 

 from Dr. George von Kaufinann, who intended to present 

 them to the British Museum. — The lower jaw of a young 

 Canadian beaver in which there was present on each side 

 a small conical tooth anterior to the deciduous premolar : 

 Dr. C. I. Forsyth Major. The supernumerary premolar 

 was considered to be a case of atavism. — Drawings made 

 from examples of two species of Castor from the East 

 Runton forest-bed : Dr. Forsyth Major. It was re- 

 marked that truly forest-bed species were found in associa- 

 tion with Pliocene species. — Photographs of Pliocene 

 Bovina? from specimens in the Florence Museum : Dr. 

 Forsyth Major. These unpublished figures showed the great 

 variability of the Pliocene Bovinre. The exhibitor endorsed 

 Falconer's opinion that these Pliocene Bovinai were nearly 

 related to the primitive buffaloes from the Siwaliks. — 

 Mammals from the provinces of Chih-li and Shan-si, 

 N. China, collected by Mr. M. P. Anderson, being the 

 tenth of the series of papers on the results of the Duke 

 (if Bedford's zoological exploration of eastern Asia : Old- 

 field Thomas. Very little material had hitherto existed 

 from this part of northern China, although a certain 

 number of specimens had been sent to Paris by P^re 

 David, and it was therefore of great importance to have 

 a series representing the species he discovered for com- 

 parison with mammals from other regions. The present 

 collection consisted of about too specimens, belonging to 

 twenty species, of which several are new. — A case of 

 imperfect development in Echinus csciilcntiis : J. Ritchie 

 and D. C. Mcintosh. — The minute structure of calcareous 

 sponge-spicules : Prof. E. .■\. Minchin and Dr. D. J. 

 Reid. The primary object of this investigation was to 

 demonstrate, by means of photomicrographs, certain struc- 

 tures, the existence of which had been strenuously denied 

 by some of the most competent of previous investigators, 

 namely, the presence, after the spicules had been cautiously 

 decalcified, of a residue in the form of an axial filament 

 which could be stained and rendered evident by certain 

 dyes, in addition to the shealh universally acknowledged 

 to exist. The axial filament was found to be verv distinct 

 in the spicules of Clathrinida?, but much less so in those 

 of Leucosoleniidae and Heterocoela. Incidentally, the study 

 of the axial filaments led to some interesting conclusions 

 regarding the comparative morphology of the two principal 

 types of spicules, monaxon and triradiate, occurring in 

 calcareous sponges. — Cyaiiiris chcnncUii of de Niceville : 

 Dr. T. A. Chapman. It was shown that this was not a 

 Cyaniris (Celastrina. Tutt), but belonged to a new genus 

 near to Everes, and that a specimen in Colonel Bingham's 

 collection, placed with chennellii, was a species almost 

 entitled to be placed in Cyaniris, for which he proposed 

 new generic and specific names. .Another specimen of the 

 latter species was in the Tring Museum. It was suggested 

 that de Niceville had both these species together in dealing 

 with chennellii, and unfortunately selected as his tvpe the 

 one that was not a Cyaniris. The two forms probably fly 

 together, and are therefore mimetic. — (i) A contribution 

 to knowledge of the batrachian Rhinoderma darwini ; 

 (2) some notes upon the anatomy of Chiromys nwdagascar- 

 tcnsis, with references to other lemurs : F. E. Bcddard. 

 — Leucocytozooii miisciili, sp.n., a parasitic protozoon 

 from the blood of white mice : Annie Porter. The para- 

 sites occur in mononuclear and transitional leucocytes, and 

 free in the plasma. The free trophozoites are gregarini- 

 form vermicules, their average size being lo-q /j. long by 

 5-1 M broad. — Descriptions of African micro-Lepidopfera : 

 E. Meyrick. loS species and eleven genera of Tortricina 

 and Tineina from the African region fespeciaUv the Trans- 

 vaal) were described as new. — A collection of calcareous 

 sponges made bv Mr. Cyril Crossland in the Cape Verde 

 Islands : A. G. Thacker. 



Royal Microscopical Society, Jnne 17.— Mr. A. N. 

 Disney in the chair. — Exhibits. — A lens for high-power 

 microscopy to obviate the use of the oscillating screen : 

 J. W. Gordon and H. Fletcher Moulton.— A small, simple 

 microscope by Cary : A. Skinner. The instrument was 



NO. 2020, VOL. 78] 



only 4§ inches high. It was provided with a plane mirror 

 and a mechanical stage having movements of 4/10-inch 

 horizontally and 5-inch vertically. Focussing the object 

 was effected by moving the stage by rack and pinion, the 

 teeth of the rack being set obliquely, as in modern micro- 

 scopes. — Micro-slides illustrating the structural parts of the 

 chick at various stages of its development from about two 

 days to 45 days : A. Flatters. — Stereophotomicrographs : 

 Wm. P. Dollman. These were photographs of Alveolina 

 x6, fungus in eye of horse X 350, statoblast of a fresh- 

 water polyzoa from Bombay X 350, Biddulphia ante- 

 deluviana from Baltic mud x 350. — Papers. — Cycloloculina, 

 a new generic type of Foraminifera found on the shore of 

 Selsey Bill : E. Heron-Allen and A. Earland. The paper 

 was illustrated by a large map, on which the localities 

 where the specimens were collected were pointed out. A 

 number of slides of specimens under microscopes, and 

 lantern-slides were shown upon the screen. Mr. Earland 

 remarked that he believed they would eventually trace the 

 specimens to some Eocene deposit which was not exposed 

 above low-water mark. The source of origin could not 

 be very far away from the place of discovery, for the speci- 

 mens were too fragile to travel any considerable distance. 

 — Illuminating apparatus for the microscope : J. W. 

 Gordon. The light from a Nernst lamp is transmitted 

 through a glass rod, the end of which nearest to the lamp is 

 cut to a plane surface and finely ground ; the other end 

 has a polished surface, flat or lenticular in form, according 

 to the user's requirements. — Corcthron criophilum : E. M. 

 Nelson. 



Linnean Society. Time 18.— Dr. D. H. Scott. F R.5., 

 president, in the chair: afterwards. Dr. A. Smith Wood- 

 ward, F.R.S., vice-president. — Altitude and distribution of 

 plants in southern Mexico : Dr. Hans Gadow. — Reports 

 on the marine biology of the Sudanese Red Sea from 

 collections made by Mr. Cyril Crossland, together with 

 collections made in the Red Sea by Dr. R. Hartmeyer. 

 On the Bryozoa, part i., Cheilostomata : A. W. Waters. 

 The author enumerates thirty-nine species of Clieilostomata 

 collected by Mr. Crossland, and twenty-th'ree collected by 

 Dr. Hartmeyer ; besides these, eighteen other species are 

 known from the Red Sea, making eighty Cheilostomata in 

 all. The distribution of Red Sea species is in most cases 

 very wide, often extending from the Atlantic to Eastern 

 seas. — The algne of the Yan Yean reservoir : G. S. 

 West. — Gardenia Thunhergia and its allies : Dr. Stapf 

 and J. Hutchinson. These Gardenias, fifteen in number, 

 form the bulk of the section Eu-Gardenia in Africa, anil 

 extend over the whole of the continent with the exception 

 of the temperate north. Owing to the instability of certain 

 characters and the scantiness of the material in the older 

 collections, they have not been well discriminated so far, 

 with the result that Gardenia Thunhergia came to cover 

 finally half a dozen perfectly distinct species ranging 

 all over Africa, whilst the plant originally described under 

 that name is actually confined to a limited area in South 

 Africa. The distinctive characters of the species admitled 

 — of which six are here described for the first time — are 

 set out in key form, whilst their distribution and synonymy 

 and full descriptions of the new species are given in (he 

 second part of the paper. It is also pointed out that the 

 segregation of the " Thunhergia " group from the closely 

 allied Indo-Malayan stock of § Eu-Gardenia must have 

 taken place in pre-Tertiary times. — The marine alg:p 

 collected in the Indian Ocean by H.M.S. Sealark : A 

 Gepp. — Nudibranchs from the Red Sea, collected bv Mr. 

 C. Crossland : Sir Charles Eliot. 



Royal Anthropoloeical Institute, June 2^. — Prof. W. 

 Ridgeway, president, in the chair. — The Kurdish tribes of 

 the Ottoman Empire : Mark Sykes. The tribes, of which 

 the author distinguished about 323, inhabit that part of 

 Asiatic Turkey between Uruma, in Persia, and ."\ngora, in 

 Asia Minor. Classification is difficult. They may be dis- 

 tinguished as nomadic, semi-sedentary, and sedentary, but 

 any other kind of classification is almost impossible. As 

 to religion, there are to bo found among them Sunni 

 Moslems, Shias, Devil worshippers. Pagans, Pantheists, 

 and Christians. Linguistically, they are divided into a 



