146 
The advantages obtained by the use of Napthaline over 
wax and other bodies recommended for this purpose are, 
a low fusing point, absence of contraction in the cutter, very 
little injury to the edge of the knife, and very ready solu- 
bility after cutting in Benzol or spirit, so that the substance 
is removed at once from the section without injury. 
Napthaline is a body not very generally known outside 
the works of the tar distiller or colour maker, so that possibly 
some of the members may not be able to obtain samples 
readily, but I shall have pleasure in supplying it to any of 
our own members. 
Professor Williamson recommended an admixture of wax 
and oil with the Napthaline, and stated that the knife cuts 
better with this addition ; he also exhibited some extremely 
beautiful longitudinal and cross sections made in this way. 
“Note on a Fossil Spider in Ironstone of the Coal Mea- 
sures/’ by Mr. John Plant, F.G.S. 
More than forty years ago Mr. William Anstice found a 
fossil insect in a nodule of ironstone from the coal formation 
of Coal brook Dale. It was figured in Dr. Buckland’s Bridge- 
water Treatise, plate 46, and described by Mr. Samouelle 
the entomologist as a beetle allied to a type of tropical Cur- 
culios, and provisionally named as Curculioides Prestvicii . 
Since that time many insects have been discovered in the 
coal measures both in England and America, and wings of 
Neuropterous insects have been found as low down in 
palseozoic rocks as the Devonian — below which no true 
insects have been yet observed. The specimen figured by 
Dr. Buckland remained unique for a long time — until 187l> 
when another was discovered by Mr. Elliott Hollier of 
Dudley, so well known for his cabinet of rare Silurian trilo- 
bites, in an ironstone nodule from the Dudley coal field. 
This discovery has thrown considerable light upon the real 
character of the one first mentioned, which turns out not 
