892 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIV. No. i 



At the regular monthly meeting of the section 

 held at the American Museum of Natural History, 

 November 13, l&ll. Chairman Frederic A. Lucas 

 presiding, the following papers were read: 

 Further Notes on the Evolution of Paired Fins: 



W. K. Gregoet. 



The problem under consideration is a phase of 

 vertebrate phylogeny and should be studied in 

 connection with this larger problem. 



In very early acquiring myotomes the ancestral 

 vertebrates gained a means of locomotion, by lat- 

 eral flexures of the body, that was more efficient 

 than movement by means of ciliated epidermis. 



The earliest vertebrates probably fed on micro- 

 scopic particles obtained by ciliary ingestion. The 

 Upper Silurian Birhenia of Traquair apparently 

 had no biting jaws and may have sucked in small 

 food particles, like the larval lamprey. Well-pre- 

 served material showed that none of the Ostraco- 

 derms had cartilage jaws or teeth, but the dermal 

 plaques around the oral hood sometimes functioned 

 as jaws. Typically carnivorous habits, involving 

 true cartilage jaws, true teeth and both paired 

 and median fins, are first known in the Aean- 

 thodian sharks, of the Upper Silurian and De- 

 vonian. In brief, fins of all kinds, conditioned in 

 their first appearance by the presence of myo- 

 tomes, were evolved as an incident in the general 

 transformation of acraniate minute forms, with 

 ciliary ingestion, into well-cephalized fishes of car- 

 nivorous habits. The speaker reviewed the evi- 

 dence for the "fin -fold" theory in the different 

 groups and stated some apparently new objections 

 to the "gill arch" theory. He cited evidence 

 tending to show that the various paddle-like types 

 of paired fins with widely protruded basal car- 

 tilages, had evolved from fin-folds independently 

 in the sharks, Crossopterygians and Dipnoans. 

 Notes on a Pheasant Expedition to Asia: G, 



William Beebe. 



Mr. Beebe gave a short talk, illustrated with 

 lantern slides, on the recent trip which he and 

 Mrs. Beebe made around the world in search 

 of material for a monograph of the PhasianidaB. 

 This expedition was made under the auspices 

 of the New York Zoological Society and at the 

 suggestion and by the financial support of Col. 

 Anthony E. Kuser. In the short time at his dis- 

 posal he was able to touch only upon Ceylon and 

 the Himalayas. In Ceylon the jungle-fowl pe- 

 culiar to the island and the India peafowl were 

 studied and their nests and eggs found, and in 

 the Himalayas every genus of pheasant was in- 



vestigated, from Gennosus melanonotus at six thou- 

 sand feet, to Ithaginis cruentus at an elevation of 

 fourteen thousand feet. 



The three most important points brought out 

 were the tremendous economic importance of this 

 group, our ignorance of their ecology, and the 

 rapidity of their extermination. 



The following nominations were made for ofii- 

 cers of the Section of Biology for 1912: 



Vice-president of the New York Academy of 

 Sciences, and chairman of the section, Dr. Frederic 

 A. Lucas (renominated). 



Secretary of the section. Dr. William K. Greg- 

 ory, American Museum of Natural History. 



L. HUSSAKOF, 



Secretary 



Ameeican Museum of Natural History 



the torrey botanical club 



The meeting of October 25, 1911, was held in 

 the museum building of the New York Botanical 

 Garden at 3:30 p.m.. Vice-president Barnhart pre- 

 siding. 



The scientific program consisted of informal 

 reports on the summer's work. Dr. N. L. Britton 

 discussed the genus Cameraria L. and illustrated 

 his remarks by specimens and illustrations of the 

 known species, together with those of an unde- 

 scribed one found by him at the United States 

 Naval Station, Guantanamo, Cuba. He also re- 

 marked on the large number of uudescribed spe- 

 cies of plants in many genera contained in the 

 recent Cuban collections of the New York Botan- 

 ical Garden. 



Dr. Marshall A. Howe gave a brief resume of 

 a paper on ' ' Some Marine Algaa of Lower Cali- 

 fornia, Mexico, ' ' which had been accepted for 

 publication in the November number of the Bulle- 

 tin. The algsB of Lower California have been 

 hitherto almost unknown, only seven species having 

 been attributed to the region. The materials on 

 which the present paper was based give evidence 

 of the existence there of at least thirty-four spe- 

 cies, a good proportion of them being new to sci- 

 ence, and it seems probable that adequate explora- 

 tion of the region would show its algal flora to be 

 rich and varied. 



Dr. J. K. Small gave some brief notes on certain 

 species of Feperomia, and Dr. H. M. Richards 

 outlined some research work on acidity in cacti, 

 which he had been prosecuting at the Desert Labo- 

 ratory, Tucson, Arizona. Fred J. Seaver, 

 Secretary pro tern. 



