1872.] 4 P11 Morse: 
The thanks of the Society were voted to the Smithsonian 
Institution for the gift of one hundred and eighty bird-skins 
to the Society’s Museum. 
June 19, 1872. 
The President in the chair. ‘Twenty-five persons present. 
Prof. Edward 8. Morse read a paper on the oviducts of 
the Terebratulina. The hearts of Cuvier were demonstrated 
to be oviducts, as Hancock and Huxley had insisted. The 
egos, discharged from the sinuses in the pallial membrane and 
floating freely in the perivisceral cavity, were seen to gather 
at the trumpet-shaped mouth of the oviduct, and were 
watched as they slowly passed through the tube and issued 
from the extreme orifice. In conclusion Prof. Morse in- 
sisted on the relationship of the Brachiopoda with the Ver- 
mes, which he had long advocated. The paper will appear 
in full in the Memoirs of the Society, Vol. 11, Pt. 2. 
- Mr. F. W. Putnam thought that now-a-days naturalists are 
too ready to take a single character as solving a question in 
the classification of animals, and as a caution alluded to the 
case of Lepidosiren, a genus of fishes allied by several char- 
acteristics to the Batrachians, and formerly placed in both 
classes by different naturalists. He suggested that the Bra- 
chiopoda might similarly present both molluscan and ver- 
mian characteristics, though of course he did not question 
the able observations of Prof. Morse. 
Prof. Morse replied that he could not allow the Brachio- 
poda a single real molluscan feature not common to many 
other annelids also. , 
The following paper was presented : — 
