TRANSACTIONS OP THE SECTIONS. 95 



On the New Corals from the Shetlands. By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.B.S., F.L.S. 

 The author mentioned that two rare and interesting- corals had been presented 

 to the British Museum by Mr. Jeiireys on his return from dredging- in the Shet- 

 lands. They were Stylaster Norivegicus and Lophophelia proUfer. 



Notes on the Whalebone Whales; with a Synopsis of the Species. 

 By Dr. J. E. Gray, F.B.S., F.L.S. 



The paper was printed in full in ' Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' 

 series 3, vol. xiv. p. 345. 



On the Food of Birds. By C. Ottlet Groom. 



The author exhibited tables of the food eaten by each bird, and showed that it 

 varied very much, according to the season of the year. He had arrived at the 

 conclusion that it was wise to protect insectivorous birds. Mr. Groom admitted 

 that the buds of some trees were sometimes destroyed, but asserted that it was only 

 when the birds were in search of a more destructive gi-ub that lay concealed 

 ■within these buds. 



On the Pedicellarice of the Echinodermata. 

 By W. Bird Herapath, 31. D., F.R.S. L. 4' E. 



These remarkable forceps-like bodies have not received that attention from micro- 

 scopists which their beauty and peculiarities demanded, and many observers have 

 wholly mistaken their significance, as even the names by which they are Iniown 

 bear witness. Pedicellus originally meaning a little louse or parasite, it is evident 

 that these bodies were formerly considered parasitic to the animals on which they 

 were found, and of independent vitality. 



The pedicellarise of some Echinoderms (more especially Urasfer rithens, Echinus 

 sphcBva, and Amphidotiis communis) have been partially described, and incor- 

 rectly figured by various observers — Midler, Sars, Mum-o, Oken, and Sharpey. 

 Miiller appears to have first given them the name by which they have been 

 hitherto known, and he conceived them to be parasitic animals, which opinion 

 Lamarck, Cuvier, and Schweigger more or less adopted ; but Munro, Oken, and 

 Sharpey regarded them as organs of the animal, of whose purj^ose and function we 

 as yet know nothing. It appears to be generally established as a fact that the 

 pedicellariffi continue their movenieuts even hours after the animal has been 

 crushed to pieces, and to all appearance dead ; yet such apparently independent 

 movements cannot be satisfactorily adduced at the present day as evidence of 

 individual vitality, as the existence of such involuntary motions in the lower 

 animals, depending on muscular irritability and reflex excito-motory actions, are 

 well known to all physiologists, whilst even the leg of a man has been observed to 

 move vigorously some time after amputation. 



Some naturalists of distinction have so far mistaken these peculiar bodies as to 

 describe one valve of a peculiar pedicellaria as " a microscopic marine mammalian 

 jaw," from its remarkable similarity in form to the cranium of an animal. 



With regard to the probable nature of the pedicellarias, a growing feeling has 

 arisen amongst naturalists that they are organs peculiar to the animals upon which 

 they are found, and that, like the bird's-head forceps on the Polyzoa, they were 

 organs of defence or prehension, which, although not absolutely necessary to the 

 existence of the Eehinodei-m, were yet as peculiar and special to the genus, and 

 even indicative of the species, as the ibrni of a tooth or the character of a bone. It 

 ■will be seen from these numerous photographs that these views are well supported 

 by examples, and that whilst gi'eat general resemblance ia form may be traced 

 to the pedicellaria3 of the various species comprising the genus Echinus, yet there 

 are many which are capable of recognition as being indicative of the species, and 

 totally different from tnose of the genus Amjihidoius, Spatangus, or Urader, -with 

 which they may be compared ; so that the author has no hesitation in stating, 

 that in the same way that an animal may be recognized by its tooth, or an Echinus 

 by its spine, it woiild be equally possible to assert positively that a certain pedi- 



