847 



Nomination. — Alan Rowe, 10, Boskenna Avenue, Nor- 

 wood, was nominated as a Fellow, 



Election. — D. F. Laurie, Department of Agriculture, 

 was elected a Fellow. 



Exhibits. — Mr. W. Howchin, F.G.S., exhibited a group 

 of pseudo-fossils, inorganic objects that have taken the form of 

 certain fossils, and have been mistaken for such. (1) A frag- 

 ment of limestone from Flinders Range, uniformly covered 

 with small pittings that resemble a perforate coral. It was 

 not a coral, the pittings being caused by a small circular lichen 

 that had eaten its way into the stone. (2) A lenticle in a 

 fine-grained biotite schist, which in form suggested a bivalve 

 shell (Unio). It was not a shell, but was formed by local 

 segregation under pressure. (3) A supposed fragment of a 

 reptilian jaw with two teeth in situ, received, together with 

 the preceding, from Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. It was 

 not of organic origin, but consisted of siliceous slate carrying 

 two elongated nodules of the same material, set side by side. 

 (4) A supposed fossilized fir cone, picked up under a group of 

 fir trees growing in the ground of Holy Trinity Church, North 

 Terrace, over twenty years ago. The specimen was only a cast 

 in hydraulic coment, probably made in sport by some humorous 

 workman. Dr. Pulleine showed a lump of cork-like bark of 

 a species of Ficus, containing the nest of a trap-door spider 

 formed in a shallow depression in the bark. As the bark 

 contained several knots of similar appearance, the nest was 

 Avell concealed. The specimen came from Samarai, Papua. 

 Captain S. A. White showed a fork of Daphnandra Tnicrantha , 

 Benth., a tree which growls up to over three feet in diameter 

 in the coastal scrubs of New South Wales, and which sheds 

 its limbs as other trees do their leaves. The peculiar socket- 

 joints were first recorded by S. W. Jackson in 1911. Also a 

 number of the ejecta of the Marked Owl (Tyto alha), from 

 Fulham. Each lump of the ejected indigestible food con- 

 tained the skull of a bird, usually a sparrow, occasionally a 

 starling, but never a native bird. The indigenous birds 

 apparently concealed themselves from their natural foe, while 

 the imported birds became its victims. The destruction of 

 these owls was therefore a great mistake. Mr. A. M. Lea 

 exhibited a drawer of insects recently obtained from Mr. 

 Horace W. Brown, mostly from the Cue district of Western 

 Australia, including some very showy beetles and grass- 

 hoppers, and a minute beetle taken from an ants' nest. Mr. 

 A. R. Riddle showed a pseudo-fossil mushroom. These fungi,, 

 which are found in many sandy districts, exude, when living,, 

 a sticky substance, which causes the sand to become cemented 

 to them in a thick mass. They are popularly known as ''stony 

 fungus." 



