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 
afiected 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. Bj 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 \>j its captors, who 
were probahlj 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. 
VL 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 
