PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY. 553 



tlieir enemies or call to their friends, said that this kind of primitive 

 language was also found amongst a few of the Crustacea and the 

 myriopods, and he exhibited, and by means of black-board drawings 

 described, the stridulating organs found in some of the decapod and 

 other Crustacea. 



Prof. Bell exhibited two young grayling, which he said were, 

 in some respects, very interesting. For one thing, the eggs of the 

 grayling were remarkable amongst those of the Salmonidfe as being 

 quite transparent, so that their course of development could be very 

 clearly observed. Since they came under his observation, the speci- 

 mens on the table had come out of the eggs, and were to be seen with 

 the yolk-sacs still adherent, and the heart beating. Another in- 

 teresting point was the bending up of the notochord at the end of the 

 tail. In the sharks the tail was always asymmetrical, but in the case 

 of the Salmonidfe it was symmetrical. It would, however, be seen 

 that in the early section the notochord had an upward bend, and 

 although in the shark this was never cured, in the salmon it was 

 cured by the peculiar arrangement of the supporting bones. 



Mr. G. Massee gave an extended resume of his paper on " The 

 Structure and Evolution of the Florideae," illustrating the subject by 

 numerous drawings upon the black-board (post). 



The President said that, whether or not they had made this 

 subject a special study, they must all have been convinced that it was 

 one of great interest, and that their thanks were due to Mr. Massee 

 for giving them such a summary of the contents of his paper, 



Mr. A. W. Bennett thought that the Society might well congratu- 

 late itself that one who was so competent for the work which he had 

 taken in hand as Mr, Massee was, had been devoti:!g himself to matters 

 of such great interest as the subject of the communication which he 

 had laid before them ; for, though these forms of vegetable life were 

 such exceedingly common objects, there was, perhaps, no group in 

 relation to which it might be said that there remained so much to be 

 discovered. To the scientific botanist the Florideae were especially 

 interesting, from the fact that they were the only class of cryptogams 

 in which there were distinct sexual organs, and in which the male 

 organ had no power of motion by means of vibratile cilia ; also as 

 illustrating the very important part which marine organisms, such 

 as the Vorticellse, perform in the process of fertilization. One point 

 referred to by Mr. Massee was of extreme interest, and that was the 

 connection between Chantransia and Batrachospermum. He quite 

 agreed that the term " alternation of generations " was misapplied in 

 this case, the phenomenon not being of the same kind as that which 

 occurs in ferns ; but was simply due to the circumstance that a differ- 

 ence of habitat induced different conditions of development, a larwe 

 amount of light forming the one and the absence of light giving rise 

 to the other. With regard to the genesis of the Florideae, he thought 

 there could be but little doubt that they had sprung from the green 

 sea- weeds. Ho was himself always glad when he found that hard 



Ser. 2.— Vol. VI. 2 O 



