78 ffiE ZOOLOGIST. 



SCIENTIFIC SOCIETIES, 



Linnean Society of London. 



December 19, 1889.— Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S., Vice-President, in the 

 chair. 



Messrs. S. A. Moore and J. J. Walker, R.N., were admitted, and 

 Messrs. C. Curtis and P. Groom were elected Fellows of the Society. 



Prof. P. M. Duncan made some supplementary remarks on a specimen 

 of Hyalonema Sieboldii, which he had exhibited at a previous meeting. 



Mr. W. Hatchett Jackson exhibited and gave an account of an electric 

 Centipede, Geophilus electricus, detailing the circumstances under which he 

 had found it at Oxford, and the result of experiments which he had made 

 with a view of determining the nature and properties of a luminous fluid 

 secreted by it. This he found could be separated from the insect, and could 

 be communicated by it to every portion of its integument. An interesting 

 discussion followed, in which Mr. Breese, Mr. A. W. Bennett, Prof. Stewart, 

 Mr. A. D. Michael, Dr. Collingwood, Mr. Christy, and Mr. J. E. Harting 

 took part. The last-named speaker pointed out that the observations made 

 by Mr. W. Hatchett Jackson on this Centipede had been long ago antici- 

 pated by Dr. Macartney in an elaborate paper on Luminous Insects published 

 in the ' Philosophical Transactions ' for 1810 (vol. 100, p. 277). 



A paper was then read by Mr. T. Johnson on Dictyopteris, in which he 

 gave a detailed account of the life-history of this Brown Seaweed, with 

 remarks on the systematic position of the Dictyotacece. Dr. Scott, Mr. George 

 Murray, aud Mr. A. W. Bennett criticised various portions of the paper, 

 and acknowledged the important scientific bearing of the facts which had 

 been brought out by Mr. Johnson's careful and minute researches. 



In the absence of the author, Mr. W. P. Sladen detailed the more 

 important portions of a paper by the Rev. John Gulick, " On Intensive 

 Segregation and Divergent Evolution in Land Mollusca," a paper which 

 might be regarded as a continuation and amplification of the views which 

 the same author had expressed in a former paper published in the Society's 

 Journal last year (vol. xx., Zool. pp. 189—274). 



Jan. 16, 1890.— Mr. J. G. Baker, F.R.S., Vice-President, in the chair. 



Mr. S. Lithgow was elected, and the following were admitted Fellows 

 of the Society :— Messrs. C. W. Turner, J. T. Tristram Valentine, William 

 Rome, and Major A. R. Dorward. 



Mr. Clement Reid exhibited and made some remarks upon a collection 

 of fruit of Trapa nutans from the Cromer Forest Bed at Mundesley. 



Mr. J. G. Baker exhibited and described a collection of cryptogamic 

 plants from New Guinea, upon which Mr. A. W. Bennett and Capt. Elwes 

 made some critical remarks. 



