138 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



muscles, the psoas parvus for example, it is most frequently 

 found only on one side—either the right or left, as the case 

 may be— the only instance as yet recorded of its existence on 

 both sides being the one above figured. 



With regard to its function, it must be evident that it is not 

 essential to the production of the voice, seeing that it is ab- 

 sent in the majority of persons. We cannot, however, doubt 

 that in those cases in which it exists, it determines certain 

 modifications of sound ; for an organ so delicately constructed 

 as the human larynx, and sounds capable of such varying 

 modulation as those of the human voice, depending for their 

 production upon such minute alterations in the relative posi- 

 tions of the vocal cords, will necessarily be more or less 

 affected by the contractions of muscular fibres which, from 

 their attachments, are capable of changing the relative posi- 

 tion of these cords to each other. But until in the same indi- 

 vidual an examination can be made of the powers of the voice 

 during life, and of the muscular and other arrangements of 

 the larynx after death, it will be difficult to determine with 

 any exactness not only the function of this, but also of many 

 of the other laryngeal muscles. 



IV. (1.) Notice of the Capture of an enormous Cycloid Fish in the Bay 

 of San Francisco, California. By Andrew Murray, Esq. 



This was a notice of an enormous fish taken at San Francisco. It was 

 360 pounds in weight, between seven and eight feet in length, and 5 feet 

 2 inches in girth round the body. It was supposed by its captors, who 

 were probably New Yorkers, to be a giant specimen of the sea basse, or 

 black basse, which is common on the east coast of America, especially 

 about New York ; but a scale of the fish , which had been sent home by 

 Mr William Murray of San Francisco, showed that it was not a basse at 

 all, nor any of the perch family. The scale was cycloid, not ctenoid, and 

 the fish was more likely to have belonged to the sea-bream tribe of carps 

 than to the sea basse. No fish of that magnitude belonging to these 

 tribes seems hitherto to have been recorded. 



(2.) Mr Andrew Murray exhibited a supposed meteoric stone, sent 

 from Hudson's Bay; which, on a section being made, was found to be 

 simply a smooth rounded mass of ironstone. 



V. The Skeleton of a Coelogenys (mus) paca was exhibited by John 

 Cleland, M.D. ; and various peculiarities of its structure were pointed 

 out. 



VI. Dr Bialloblotsky addressed the Society at some length on the 

 relations of the branches of trees and plants to the parent stem, forming 

 as they did certain definite angles ; he expressed astonishment at finding 

 various evergreens exposed to the cold of our winters which in Germany 



