rs 
26 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES, 
deflection. If the leaf be so placed in the electrodes that the deflec- 
tion of the normal leaf-current shall be leftwards, and a fly creep into 
it, the moment the fly touches one of the six itive s 
on the upper surface of the blade, the leaf contracts, the current 
disappears, and the needle swings to the right 7.¢., to ; an 
each time the insect moves there is a similar movement of the 
needle to the right, always coming to rest somewhat further to the left 
than before, and then slowly resuming its previous position. The 
same phenomena are seen if the sensitive hairs be touched with a 
disappears when contraction takes place ; a noteworthy difference lies 
in the fact that muscle will answer to stimuli any number of times 
in rapid succession, whilst in Dionea no effect is produced unless an 
interval of from five to twenty seconds has elapsed since the preceding 
irritation. The period of latency, too, which in muscle is very short, 
about one-hundredth of a second, is in Dionea about one-third of a 
second.—In answer to Dr. Hooker, Prof. Sanderson said that no 
ese experiments 
upon the nature of contractile material in plants. 
Linnean Socrery.— ov. 6th, 1873.—The Society met for the first 
House—the President, Mr. G. Bentham, in the chair. The President 
made some observations on the history, condition, and prospects of the 
Society. Though it is seventeen years since the Government first recog- 
nised the claims of the Society, it is only now that it can be considered to 
possess its own quarters, the rooms occupied in old Burlington Hou 
since 1857, when the Society mov m Soho Square, having been 
and to supply gaps. The finances of the Society are, h wever, ina 
satisfactory condition, in spite of the constantly increasing expense of 
nl sh 
described by Brown in 1844. In his monograph of the Order recently 
published in the 17th vol. of De Candolle’s « Prodromus,” Dr. Hooker 
has referred to this plant the Prosopanche of De Bary (Abh. d. Naturf. 
Ges. Halle, Bd. x. (1868) p. 243), founded ona plant from Buenos 
