PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
JANUARY, 1866. 
GENERAL MEETING. 
Thursday, January 4. — Mr. W. Sanders, F.R.S., President, in 
the chair. 
The Hon. Secretary announced the following donations to the Library 
— Lovell Reeve's " British Land and Fresh Water Mollusca," presented 
by Mr. W. James ; " Memoir and Papers of Hugh E. Strickland/' pre- 
sented by Mr. W. H. L. Walcott ; The Food, Use, and Beauty of 
British Birds," by C. O. Groome Napier, presented by the author. 
The President said that it was his painful duty to announce the 
death of Mr. George E. Roberts, of London, a gentleman who was 
widely known and respected for his geological researches in the field ; 
and who was one of the Corresponding Members of the Society. 
Dr. Henry Fripp read an elaborate Essay " On the Function of Sight 
in Fishes, and on certain Structural Peculiarities of the Fishes' Eye," the 
subject matter of which was divided into two parts. 
The author, briefly alluding to the popular misapprehension respecting the 
status of the fish in the animal scale, pointed out that under the peculiar physical 
conditions of fish existence, the different sensory endowments might be expected 
to vary greatly in functional activity and organic development. Thus the senses 
of touch and taste, particularly the latter, were relatively undeveloped ; those of 
smell and hearing, being of higher importance, and especially adapted to the 
medium through which odors and sounds were conveyed, indicated an increased 
speciality of function ; whilst the sense of sight was provided for by an organisa- 
tion developed on the type common to all classes of the vertebrate kingdom, and 
exhibited a perfection of construction which corresponded with the extreme im- 
portance of the seeing faculty to the active life of the fish. The singular arrange- 
