RECORDS. 641 



Jonathan Dwight, Jr., The Sequences of Moults and 



Plumages of the Passerine Birds of New York State. 



The Chair appointed Professors H. F. Osborn and C. L. 

 Bristol and Mr. C. F. Cox a committee to consider and nominate 

 candidates for the grant of the John S. Newberry Research Fund. 



Summary of Papers. 



Mr. Summer showed that Teleost eggs can be divided into 

 two types according to their approach to the holoblastic forms 

 of cleavage ; that germ disc and yolk cannot strictly be contrasted 

 as epiblast and hypoblast respectively ; that the germ.-ring 

 arises either by involution or delamination or both ; that the 

 " Prostoma " of Kupffer is a reality, his contention that the 

 prostomia represents the entire blastopore being, however, 

 wrong ; that the hypoblast in the stone-cat-fish is derived 

 partly from the posterior lip of the prostoma and partly from the 

 germ-ring, perhaps wholly from the prostoma in the trout ; that 

 the function of Kupffer' s vesicle, which arises as a cleft between 

 the prostomal entoderm and the involuted margin of the blas- 

 toderm, is probably the absorption of fluid nutriment elaborated 

 from the yolk by the periblast. 



Dr. Clark's paper summed up the work on the Echinoderms 

 collected by the New York University Expedition in the summer 

 of '97 and '98, and presented a check list of the Echinoderms 

 thus far reported from Bermuda. The collection of 1898 was 

 especially rich in holothurians, containing many species hitherto 

 collected, adding several others to the list from Bermuda, and 

 one new to science. From his v/ork on SticJiopus, Dr. Clark 

 suggested that the different forms found in Bermuda may be ma- 

 ture and immature individuals of 5. nidbii (Semp.). Synapta 

 vivipora was found under conditions widely different from those 

 in Jamaica. The new Synapta is allied to S. inliacrcns and Dr. 

 Clark has named it ^. acantJiia. 



The Echinoderms from Bermuda are distributed as follows : 

 Asteroidae 4 ; Ophiuroidea 7 ; Echinoidae 8 ; Holothuroidae 10. 



Dr. Dwight fully described the process of moult in its rela- 

 tion to the plumage of about one hundred and fifty species of 



