Zoological Society. 501 



F.L.S., giving an account of a double variety of the Field Scabious, 

 Scabiosa arvensis, L. (Knautia arvensis, Coult.), a specimen of which 

 he presented to the Society. The specimen was gathered in a 

 stubble-field at Norton in the county of Durham on the 29th of 

 September, and was the only one seen with a double flower, all the 

 other plants in the field presenting the ordinary flower of the species. 

 The doubling consists in the enlargement of the inner florets to the 

 same size as the outer ones in the ordinary flowers ; but the anthers 

 and stamina of the former do not appear to have become abortive as 

 in the outer enlarged florets, and as might have been expected from 

 the similar change in the corolla. In Hooker's ' British Flora,' the 

 species is characterized by the corolla of its outer florets having 

 unequal and of its inner florets equal segments : in this double 

 variety the segments of the inner florets are unequal like those of 

 the outer. 



Mr. Westwood, F.L.S., exhibited a small branch of a Nelis d'hiver 

 pear grown against a wall in the garden of Mr. Wilmot, Isleworth, 

 covered with a great number of large, solid, woody, gall-like protu- 

 berances caused by the punctures of a species of Aphis closely allied 

 to the American blight, the twigs in this branch having been com- 

 pletely stunted in their growth, and not exceeding an inch in length, 

 the energy of the tree having been concentrated in the growth of the 

 protuberances. Mr. Westwood pointed out the difference between the 

 real galls (sometimes quite hard and woody in their texture) caused 

 by the punctures of insects and the deposition of eggs, and these 

 pseudo- galls which did not enclose eggs, but were the result of 

 the punctures of the proboscis of insects for obtaining an immediate 

 supply of food. The latter are of great rarity, and Mr. Westwood 

 had never seen any which could be compared in extent to the speci- 

 men exhibited, which was moreover covered with a whitish powder 

 discharged from the bodies of the Aphides, and with a great number 

 of the skins shed by them during their transformations. 



Read a further continuation of Mr. Huxley's Memoir " On the 

 Anatomy of the Diphydce," &c. 



ZOOLOGICAL, SOCIETY. 



May 22, 1849.— -Harpur Gamble, Esq., M.D., in the Chair. 



On the British specimens of Regalecus. By J. E. Gray, 

 Esq., F.R.S. &c. 



The occurrence of a specimen of Regalecus on the coast of North- 

 umberland, which is now being exhibited in Regent-street, has in- 

 duced me to communicate the following remarks which I have col- 

 lected connected with the history of its former occurrence in this 

 country, some of which appear to have escaped the researches of our 

 British naturalists. 



Though the materials here referred to are mentioned by M. Valen- 

 ciennes in the tenth volume of the ' Histoire des Poissons,' the refer- 



