112 
PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
North Kent, and was found by H. Davies, Esq., of Brighton, 
who sent it to Dr. Moore. Like its congeners, this forms a 
very neat and pretty little object, though the present example 
had become too dried and brittle to enable one fully to realise 
its elegauce. 
Cross Section of the Spine of Acanthaster echinites, Ellis et 
Solander, was exhibited by Mr. Mackintosh. The genus is re- 
markable for the possession of numerous madreporic bodies and 
spines with double articulation, which in section show a pith 
with rather larger interspaces than are seen in the peripheral 
part, which is covered externally by a tolerably thick skin. There 
were no indications of the solid wedges which form so charac- 
teristic a feature in the spines of Sea-Urchins. 
Problematic cotton-like branched fibrous structure^ exhibited. 
— Mr. Archer drew attention to a problematic piece of organi- 
zation, met with in an aquatic gathering, resertbling a little 
“ tree ” of colourless cotton fibre, having enclosed in the stem and 
branches and running longitudinally therein one or more opaque 
and shining wire-like fibres, these apparently very brittle, being 
often here and there seemingly broken into short lengths ; the 
apices of the branches, which proceeded in a tufted manner from 
the central stem, were apparently granuliferous, tie parts lower 
down hyaline, and more or less flattened and twisted — the 
question was, what could this thing be ? 
22nd May, 1879. 
Spermatic state of Volvox, showing the groups of soermatozoids 
and the yellow oospores, were exhibited by Mr. Archer; no 
meeting of the two elements had been noticed. 
Berkleyia.—J)T. E. P. Wright read a letter which he had re- 
ceived from Dr. Griinow in reference to the algal form exhibited 
by Dr. Wright to the Club in May, 1876. This form, from Dr. 
Harvey’s Friendly Island Collection of Algae, had been described 
by Dr. Griinow in the Botany of the Novara Reise as Berkleyia 
Barveyana, which fact had been overlooked by Dr. Wright in 
1876. At Dr. Griinow’s request he had again carefully and in 
many ways examined the type-specimens, and he now exhibited 
mounted preparations thereof, some in glycerine, sone simply 
burnt, and some cleared with weak acid. In none of these 
was there a trace of silex to be seen, unless here and there an 
odd stray frustule of a Navicula, a Diatoma, or a Suriiella. In 
addition Dr. Griinow had very kindly forwarded some mounted 
specimens of his species, of the nature of which there could be no 
doubt, they being decidedly siliceous fruatules, in all probability 
quite correctly assigned to the genus Berkleyia by Dr. Grriinow, 
so that now the question stood thus : Berkleyia Rar^wyanus 
Griinow, was a diatom from the Friendly Islands. lut the 
