242 REPORT — 1871. 



to the machinery, but saved the road from the grinding-action of the iron wheels 

 which was so injurious to bye-ways. There had been serious objections made to 

 the use of these engines with rigid tires ; but the author ventured to assert that 

 the india-rubber tires not only did not injure, but actually improved the roads. 

 The only ground upon which india-rubber tires did not work well was where the 

 soil was extremely wet, or of a very soft and sloppy nature. For farm work, the 

 wheels of the engine required a much thicker coat of india-rubber. 



APPENDIX. 



Notes on Dredging at Madeira. 

 By fhe Rev. Robeet Boca Watson, B.A., F.E.S.E., F.G.S. 



The difficulties of shell-gathering at Madeira are very many and very great. 

 As the result of several years' work, the author has to record that six or seven spe- 

 cies mentioned in MacAndrew's List have hitherto escaped him ; that to the one 

 hundred and twenty-seven species named by MacAndrew (besides these he gives 

 twenty-nine unnamed = one hundred and fifty-six in all) the author has succeeded 

 in adding something like two hundred and fifty more, or from three hundred and 

 fifty to four hundred in all ; and while these strongly confirm MacAndrew's gene- 

 ralization of the Mediterranean character of the Mollusca, yet a few of them pre- 

 sent forms belonging some of them to the tropics, and others to very distant 

 localities, as, for instance, Ranella rhodnstoma and Triton chhrostoma, which Reeve, 

 not perhaps very reliably, assigns, the first to the Islands of Capul and Masbate of 

 the Philippines, and the second to the Island of Annaa in the Pacific. Further, 

 among these two hundred or two hundred and fifty species, eighty or, perhaps, 

 ninety may probably prove to be new species, and three or four new genera. 



It is somewhat curious that only one of the author's new species has been 

 recognized by Mr. Gwyn Jeff'reys as obtained by him from the ' Porcupine' 

 dredgings. 



The publication of full details is contemplated by the author. 



On the Ciliated Condition of the Inner Layer of tlie Blastoderm and of the 

 Omphalo-mesenteric Vessels in the Egg of the Common Fowl. By 15. T. Lowne. 



Mr. Lowne stated that the number of observations he had at present made were 

 insufficient to substantiate his opinion beyond a doubt, but that he thought it ex- 

 tremely probable, from what he had seen, that, 1st, the inner layer of the blastoderm 

 is ciUated, at least in tracts of its surface. He had several times observed the most 

 marked cmTents, and he believed, but was not certain, that he had distinguished 

 the cilia. 



2ndly. From a single observation he thought that the interior of the omphalo- 

 mesenteric vessels is ciliated. He saw in a portion of the blastoderm of a five-day 

 chick the most marked circulation in the omphalo-mesenteric vessels. In one 

 large vessel, especially where the two cut extremities were blocked with blood- 

 corpuscles, a rapid movement was taking place. 



Mr. Lowne stated that he was still investigating the subject. 



