( 155 ) 

 SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES. 



Linnean Society of London. 



February \5th, 1894. — Prof. Stewart, President, in the chair. 



Mr. A. Whyte was elected a Fellow of the Society. 



Dr. Maxwell Masters exhibited a remarkably good specimen of Peziza 

 tuberosa on roots of Anemone. It is only comparatively recently that the 

 hard lumps (sclerotia) in the soil of anemone-beds have been definitely 

 associated with the fruit of this Peziza; at one time the sclerotia were 

 regarded as diseased masses of the root-stock. Dr. Masters also exhibited 

 some root-galls on plum caused by Cynips (Biorhiza) terminalis. Mr. 

 Cameron in his monograph on the Cynipidce, published by the Ray Society, 

 has noticed galls formed by this insect on the beech, pine, and vine, but 

 not on the plum. 



Mr. Digby Nicholl exhibited a singular variety of the Partridge, Perdix 

 cinerea, which had been shot by Mr. A. Waugh, near Creswell, Northum- 

 berland, in September, 1893. In colour it resembled the Red Grouse, 

 having the breast and flanks suffused with large patches of dark reddish 

 brown, and the dorsal plumage very much darker than usual. Mr. Harting 

 pointed out that this variety was described and figured by the late John 

 Hancock, in his * Catalogue of the Birds of Northumberland,' where it had 

 been met with more than twenty years ago, and in this county he himself 

 had also procured a specimen at Corbridge-on-Tyne, which was preserved 

 in the collection of varieties formed by the late Mr. F. Bond. 



Mr. Norman Douglass exhibited a black variety of the Water Vole, 

 Arvicola amphibius, captured at Banchory, Kincardineshire, remarking that 

 this variety, which was at one time considered to be restricted to Scotland, 

 had been met with in several English counties (Zool. 1892, pp. 281—293), 

 and was well established in the fen country of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire. 



Mr. George Brebner read a paper on the " Origin of the filamentous 

 thallus of Dumontia filiformis" in which, by the aid of the oxyhydrogen 

 lantern, he demonstrated— (1), that D '. filiformis has a creeping basal thallus 

 by which it adheres to the substratum; (2), that the creeping thallus is 

 perennial, and when epiphytic is attached to its host by plugs of tissue 

 which cause marked disintegration of the cells of the host; (3), that the 

 ordinary filiform thallus owes its origin to the intercalary transverse 

 septation of the articulations of certain branches of the creeping thallus. 

 The group of active filaments may be endogenous or exogenous, and the 

 order in which the rows of cells become specialized is generally centrifugal ; 

 (4), these specialized outgrowths emerge from the creeping thallus — 

 remaining attached to it by the basal portion — and by the subsequent growth 

 and division of the constituent filaments give rise to the annual well-known 



