514 [ProC" B.N.F.C., 



passed, expressing the hope of the Club that some means 

 should be found for the preservation of this interesting relic. 



After a number of new members had been elected, and a vote 

 of thanks passed to the ladies who had officiated at the tea 

 tables, the formal meeting broke up, and the company scattered 

 through the rooms for a more thorough examination of the 

 various objects lent for the occasion. As usual, the Committee 

 had selected a special subject for illustration, which this year 

 was the Echinodermata, fossil and recent. These form a branch 

 of the group of Radiata, or ray-like animals ; which, besides the 

 Echinodermata, includes the jelly fish and their congeners, and 

 also the coral animals, sea anemones, hydras, &c., &c. The 

 Echinodermata comprise within their limits not merely the com- 

 mon sea urchins washed upon our coasts, but also the star fishes, 

 and the Encrinites, or stone lilies, of the deep tropical seas. The 

 group, as illustrated on Friday evening, displayed many fossil 

 urchins, encrinites, and other kindred forms, from the Devonian, 

 Carboniferous, Permian, Liassic, and Chalk formations, con- 

 spicuous amongst which was a large slab, bearing trace of the 

 richness of life of an ancient sea bed, from the Lias of Lyme 

 Regis. Amongst the representatives of the group of the 

 present day, were a number of rare specimens lent by Professor 

 A. C. Hadden, F.L.S., gathered during the recent cruise of the 

 * ' Lord Bandon " off the south-west of Ireland. This cruise, and a 

 similar one of last year, was undertaken upon a grant from the 

 Royal Irish Academy, and several members of the Field Club 

 were associated in the work. These species, inhabiting deep 

 water, undisturbed by the action of waves, and even of currents, 

 acquire a fantastic elaborateness of form, and a development of 

 spines and other appendages, not often found in those of 

 shallower and more disturbed waters, and some of them were 

 of remarkable delicacy and beauty. 



Close beside the section devoted to the Echinodermata were 

 'the drawings and specimens exhibited by Mr. W. Gray, M.R.I.A., 

 used in his lecture, during the previous winter, upon "A frond of 

 Laminaria, and the lowly forms of life to be found thereon." 

 This was, in fact, an illustration of the harmonious connection 



