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Ordinary Meeting, December 28th, 1880. 
E. W. Binney, F.RS., F.G.S., President, in the Chair. 
“The Literary History of Parnell’s Hermit,” by William 
E. A. Axon, M.RS.L., &c. 
In this paper the author traced the story of the angel 
and the hermit which forms the subject of Parnell’s “Her- 
mit.” Yoltaire, w T ho used the same apologue, was thought 
to have copied it from Parnell, but it has been used by many 
others. James Plowed, Sir Philip Herbert, Dr. Henry More, 
and Thomas White employed it in the seventeenth century, 
and Luther Bradw^ardine and Herolt still earlier. It occurs 
in Gesta Bomanorum and other similar collections of the 
fourteenth century, and in various recensions of the “Yitse 
Patrum.” It is also in the Koran, and had probably been 
borrowed by Mahomet from a Jewish source, as a very 
interesting form of it is in the Talmud. 
The relations of those different versions to each other was 
then discussed at some length in their connection with the 
history of fiction. 
General Meeting, January 11th, 1881. 
E. W. Binney, F.RS., F.G.S., President, in the Chair. 
Mr. Daniel Adamson, F.G.S., of the Towers, Didsbury, 
was elected an Ordinary Member of the Society. 
Ordinary Meeting, January 25th, 1881. 
E. W. Binney, F.RS., F.G.S., President, in the Chair. 
R D. Dakbishire, F.G.S., read a paper “ On the Question 
Proceedings— Lit.,& Phil, Soc. — Vol. XX.— No. 6— Session 1880-81, 
