I9T4. 
Iihh Societies. 
121 
DUBLIN MICROSCOPICAL CLUB. 
March ii, — The Club met at Leinstcr House, J. H. Woodworth 
(President), in the chair. 
Prof. G. H. Carpenter showed specimens of Springtails collected in 
December, igii, at Granite Harbour, South Victoria Land, yy'^ S. lat., 
by Messrs. Griffith, Taylor and F. Debenham of the second Scott 
Antarctic Expedition. The insects vere found on the surface of small 
pools, under stones clustered on a ftlm of ice. All appear to belong to 
Gomphtocephnlus Hodgsoni, Carpenter, the species found in moss at 
the same locality by the first Scott Expedition in 1906. The specimens 
now collected are, however, in much better condition than those brought 
home previously and it is hoped that a fairly complete account of this 
most southerly kno\\n insect may be published shortly, 
W, F. GuNN showed the fruiting bodies of a fungus observed in the 
decomposed tissues of a potato which had been kept in a glass cell for 
several months, It had been kindly identified for the exhibitor by 
Dr. Pethybridge, who stated that the red bodies in the decomposed 
potato are the perithecia of a fungus known as Hypomyces solani which 
according to Reinke and Berthold, has as its coindial stage Fusarium 
solani, Sacc. If the perithecia are gently squeezed under a cover glass, 
the two -celled diamond shaped ascospores are forced through the termi- 
nal pore on the neck of the perithecium. At an earlier stage the 
perithecia contain asci, each with eight ascospores, but the asci liberate 
these spores whilst they are still within the perithecium. Hence to 
see them one must break open a young perithecium. 
In confirmation of the views of Renike and Berthold quoted above, 
it may be mentioned that the potato before being put into the glass 
box was badly attacked by the dry rot caused by Fusarium solani, 
but a little water was placed in the glass and a wet rot supervened 
through the agency of bacteria and other organisms. 
April 8. — The Club met at I.einstcr House, J. H. Woodworth 
(President), in the chair. 
N. CoLGAN exhibited a species of Nemertine worm in course of 
development from a mass of ova found attached to a stone at low- 
water near Bullock, Co. Dublin, on the 14th March. The bright 
yellow ova were contained in flask -shaped capsules, from one to 
seven in a capsule, and the whole mass, made up of about 100 capsules, 
was enveloped in an oblong general envelope of clear and very tenacious 
gelatinous mucus. Several of the ova were found to have fully hatched 
out after twenty days, the young worms creeping actively and showing 
two eyes. The young worm, the eggs, and the capsules agreed perfectly 
with the figures in Plate xxiii. of Mackintosh's " Briti.sh Annelids," Part I., 
illustrating the development of Linens gesserensis, though the period of 
development which he observed for this species was much longer, extending 
to some six weeks. At maturity L. gesserensis has numerous eyes, but 
for a long time after hatching out the young worm shows but two. 
