22 
characters of any one species of animal. Our knowledge of amseboid life is 
no longer confined to a particular series of individuals, nor indeed to the 
province of Protozoic animals alone. And our conception of matter in the 
amoeboid phase is that of a special molecular constitution of organic plasm, 
always associated with a limited specific functional activity, If, therefore, 
the word Amoeba be retained as the distinctive appellation of the creatures 
originally thus named, it should not be incautiously .given to animals or 
animal protoplasm much lower in physiological rank and structural organi 
zation. Finally, 1 would claim for the typical Amoeba the full admission 
of its title to a structurally differentiated organism. 
VII. 
On "The Scales and other Tegttmkntary Organs of Fishes." 
ByS. H. Swayne, M.R.C.S. 
Read at the General Meeting, October *Jth, 1869. 
Abstract. 
The author first compared the many forms presented by the tegumentary 
organs in mammalia, birds, reptiles and fishes in regard to variety and beauty, 
remarking that fishes equal mammals in the variety, and birds in the 
beauty of their clothing. For the sake of convenience ho considered the 
various forms under the four orders of Agassiz— Cycloid, Ctenoid, Ganoid, 
and Placoid ; although it is to be observed that these divisions are of far 
less significance in a relation to recent fishes than they have been allowed to be 
in regard to the fossil. Thus the succession of the different forms in geological 
time, and the strongly marked characters of the clothing of ancient fishes 
may be contrasted with the occurrence of very diverse forms of skin- 
covering in closely allied genera in recent fishes, as e.g. in the Pleuronectidse. 
The skin of fishes is divisible, like that of other vertebrates, into derm 
andepiderm; all the skin organs are developed in the derm, and have a 
covering of epiderm. The Cycloid and Ctenoid forms were described first by 
the author as being less organised than the others. The names Cycloid and Cte- 
noid are derived from the rounded shape of the first, and the comb-like proj ecting 
edge of the second, but the two forms merge into one another. Both are called 
"horny" because the calcareous matter is small in amount and is not in the 
