594 



The President, in response to a question, explained the 

 action taken by the Council with respect to the vacant 

 directorship of the Adelaide Botanic Garden. 



Exhibits. — Mr. A. M. Lea exhibited some mealy bugs 

 (Monophlebus craivfordi) with some minute parasitic blue flies 

 (Lestophonus iceryae) reared from the- same; they are well 

 known as also attacking the cottony-cushion scale (Icerya 

 purchasi) ; also the strikingly-distinct sexes of a paradise fly 

 (Callipappus), the male having two beautiful gauzy wings 

 and a tuft of glossy filaments for a tail ; the female was 

 destitute of wings, tail, or eyes; also two collections of beetles 

 from Northern Queensland. Captain S. A. White showed 

 Paradisea apoda (Great Bird of Paradise) from the Aru 

 Islands; Rupicola sp. (Manakin or Cock of the Rock) from 

 South America; Erythropitta macklotii yorki (Blue-breasted 

 Pitta), frdm Cape York, Queensland, and Coloburis versicolor 

 (Noisy Pitta), found in Southern Queensland and New South 

 Wales. Mr. Walter Howchin showed consolidated river 

 gravels from pits near Bower, on the Morgan branch railway. 

 The alluvium consists of rounded stones varying in size from a 

 pea to a hen's egg, and forms a low ridge on both sides of the 

 railway, and apparently trending to the south-east. As.no 

 stream now exists in the neighbourhood, the gravel must have 

 been laid down by a drainage system now extinct, and by a 

 no mean river, now dead. It has been extensively worked 

 for railway ballast. 



Papers. — "Note on a High-level Occurrence of a Fossil- 

 iferous Bed of Upper Cainozoic Age in the Neighbourhood of 

 the Murray Plains/' by Walter Howchin, F.G.S.; 

 "Mineral Notes," by Sir Douglas Mawson, D.Sc.; "Chemi- 

 cal Notes on Davidite," by W. T. Cooke, D.Sc; "A Note- 

 worthy Occurrence of Biotite-Mica," by Evan R. Stanley, 

 F.G.S. 



Ordinary Meeting, September 14, 1916. 



The President (J. C. Verco, M.D., F.R.C.S.) in ^ the 

 chair. 



The President referred to the bestowment of the Vic- 

 toria Cross upon Captain Blackburn, a son of the late Canon 

 Blackburn, a former president of the Society and a large 

 contributor to its Transactions. Another of the late Canon's 

 sons was wounded in Gallipoli and is still at the front, while 

 a third son is serving as Lieut. -Colonel in the Army Medical 

 Corps. 



