24 



quite fresh condition, at Tarporley in Cheshire, on April 1st, 1908. 

 This bird is a native of the Southern Pacific, and has ahnost 

 certainly never been recorded from the northern hemisphere, and 

 certainly never from Europe before. 



The Secretary, on behalf of Mr. R. Lydekker, F.R.S., F.Z.S., 



exhibited the tanned skin of a Wild Cat, obtained by The Hon. 

 Mason Mitchell, of the American Consular Service, in Sze-chuen. 

 Mr. Lydekker had compared it with a light-coloured skin of 

 Felis temmincki from Silckim, and described it as a new local race 

 of that species. 



Mr. 0. Da VIES Sherborn, F.Z.S., exhibited a specimen of chert 

 from the Middle Culm - measures (Carboniferous) of Christen 

 Down, near Doddiscombe Leigh, Devonshire, showing numerous 

 large and well-preserved Radiolaria. 



A memoir by Mr. C. F. Jenkin, entitled " The Cyril Crossland 

 Collection of Oalcarea from Zanzibar and Wasin (British East 

 Africa)," was communicated by Prof. A. Dendy, F.R.S. , F.Z.S. 



Mr. R. E. Turner, F.Z.S., read a paper entitled " Notes on 

 the Australian Fossorial Wasps of the Family 8pliegulcE, with 

 Descriptions of new Species." Eighty species were described as 

 new ; and the absence of the genera Oxyheli(,s and PMlanthus, 

 otherwise of world-wide range, from Australia was commented on. 



Mr. J. T. Cunningham, M.A., F.Z.S., communicated a paper 

 entitled " The Heredity of Secondary Sexual Characters in 

 Relation to Hormones, a Contribution to the Theory of Heredity." 

 The paper contained an examination and criticism of the most 

 important recent investigations and theoi-ies on the subject by 

 evolutionists of various schools, namely the theory which attributes 

 such characters to constitutional causes such as male katabolism. 

 Prof. Karl Pearson's biometrical investigation of sexual selection 

 in man, Castle's Mendelian theory of the heredity of sex, and 

 Geoffrey Smith's views on dimorphism of males and parasitic 

 castration in Crustacea. The author maintained that all these 

 contributions were more or less inconsistent with the known facts 

 concerning the connection between the development of secondary 

 sexual characters and the functional activity of the primary 

 gonads. He drew attention to the recent discovery and experi- 

 mental proof on the part of physiologists that the development of 

 the characters was due to the stimulus of a chemical substance or 

 hormone produced by the testis or ovary, and passed into the 

 blood, and suggested that conversely hormones from parts of 

 the soma might affect the gametes in the gonads. In this way 

 bhe hyperti-ophy of a part of the body due to external stimulation 

 might modify the corresponding determinants in the gametes so 



