261 
MICROSCOPICAL SECTION. 
April 27th, 1862. 
E. W. Binney, F.R.S., F.G.S., in the Chair. 
Contributions were acknowledged from Captain Janies 
Clarke, of the ship “ Lightning,” consisting of a speci- 
men of mud, from Hobson’s Bay, Australia; a specimen 
of Fucus natans, or gulf weed, from the Sargasso Sea, and 
sand, &c., from a sounding off the south coast of Ireland. 
Captain Contente, of the Portuguese steamer “Lusitania,” 
forwarded a sounding taken between Cape Carvoeiro and the 
Berling Islands, off the Coast of Portugal. 
Professor Calvert presented to the members of the 
Section a number of bottles containing carbolic acid in 
crystals, for the purpose of experimenting upon its utility as 
a preservative fluid for microscopical objects, as well as for 
specimens of natural history. 
Mr. Thomas D. Toase, of Jamaica, presented, through 
Professor Calvert, specimens of Diatomacea, from Kingston 
Harbour; pollen of a West Indian lily; a portion of a plan- 
tain leaf, with two mounted slides of the same, showing 
cells, raphides, &c. Mr. Toase also sent drawings and 
description of a Rotifer, found upon Conferva, at Jamaica, 
which is not known to any of the members present. It 
consists of an oval body or outer case of a brownish colour 
ToW of an inch in length ; from near one end of the oval is 
protruded a transparent neck or contractile body, furnished 
when protruded with four hairs or feelers, a lip, and a kind 
of operculum, around which Mr. Toase recognised the 
presence of cilia by the current of water, but he failed to 
discover the cilia for want of defining power in his microscope, 
c 
