BEISTOL NATURALISTS' SOCIETY 
♦ 
[From the Bristol Daily Font, February 5th, 1866.] 
The usual monthly general meeting took place at the 
Philosophical Instituiion on Thursday last, when, notwith- 
standing the stormy character of the evening, there was a 
good attendance ot members and their friends. Mr. W. 
{Sanders, F.R.S., presided. The hocj. secretary announced 
the foil iwing elections of ordinary members : —Messrs. G. 
Gillford, F. K. Bernard, T. Usher, and R. S. Standerwick; 
also the following donations to the society's library : 
Lovell Keeve's "British Land and Fresh Water MoUusca," 
presented by Mr. W. James; " Memoir and Papers of Hugh 
E. Strickland," presented by Mr. W. H. L. Walcott ; "The 
Food, Use, and Beauty of British Birds," by C. O. Groome 
Napier, presented by the author. 
Mr. W, W. Stoddart read a note on Involutina liassica, 
a microscopic fossil, new to the Bristol district. At the 
Bath meeting of the British Association, Mr. Brady, of 
Newcastle, had read a paper announciog the discovery of 
this fossil in the lias beds at Fretherne clilf and Defford, 
and had then proposed the above name for it. Mr, Stoddart 
had been fortunate enough to meet with it at Hortield, and 
after stating that it belonged to the lowest division of animal 
life, Foramenifera, he gave a general outline of the charac- 
teristics of this group, with the classiticatiou proposed by 
Dr. Carpenter in his monograph, and illustrated his re- 
marks with some photographs projected on a screen by the 
oxyhydrogen microscope ; the whole group being divided 
according to the character of the shell into Porcellanous, 
Hyaline or vitreous, and Arenaceous : the fossil described 
by the author belonged to the last division, in struc- 
ture lying between Rotalina aud Trochammina, and 
considered by Mr, Brady as possibly a pseudomorph 
of Pulvinulina. In character it was discoidal, biconvex, 
from l-15th to l-"Oth ©f an inch in diameter, and l-48th 
inch thick— granulated, the outer edge raised— spiral walls, 
with straight septa. 
Mr. Thomas Pease, F.G.S., one of the vice-presidents, 
then read a paper by the Rev. Gilbert N. Smith, of Gum- 
freston, on " Recent Researches in a Bone Cave near Tenby." 
This cave, called " The Hoils," or Haul's Mouth, was in an 
underclifiE of the mountain limestone, conspicuously facing 
the sunrise, whence probably its name was derived. Having 
been long an object of curiosity, it had been much disturbed, 
and its contents were first reported on at the Oxford meeting 
of the British Association by the author. The floor was 
composed of stalagmitic breccia, three or four inches thick, 
which had long heen broken up, except in patches in one or 
two corners, one of which was broken up for the first time 
in July last, when two femurs of a bear, still in position, 
and unquestionably of the oldest bones, were extracted. 
Among the disturbed earth and stones, half a lower human 
jaw was found, a good many chert and fiint flakes, and, as 
if to set all speculation of relative age at rest, five unworn 
Irish harp halfpence of the reign of George IH. In 
October last search was made for the rest of the human 
skeleton, the plan adopted being to shovel into the light at 
the entrance all the soil from the beginning of the passage, 
and in a recess the greater part of the vertebiie, the blade 
bones, radius and ulna, and other remains of the same, or 
another, human skeleton were found. These, however, Mad 
not attained to that increase of weight and peculiar aense 
fosail character so well known in cave bones. In the dis- 
