40 
MICEOSCOPICAL AND NATUEAL HISTOEY SECTION. 
November lOtb, 1879. 
Chaeles Bailey, F.L.S., President of the Section 
in the Chair. 
Professor Boyd Dawkins, F.B.S., brought before the 
notice of the Section a map on which was represented the 
geography of the British Isles in the Meiocene Age. The 
land extended northwards by way of the Faeroes and Ice- 
land to Greenland on the one hand, and to Spitzbergen on 
the other, and is now represented by the area included by 
the 400 fathom line. This land barrier offered a means of 
free communication both to Europe and North America, by 
which both plants and animals were able to migrate from 
the one to the other. It explains the many species common 
to Meiocene Europe and America, such as the Sequoia, the 
Bedwood, Magnolia, Tulip tree, and Swamp Cypress, and 
others. The climate of the Arctic region was then tem- 
perate, but not so warm as in the preceding Eocene age. 
“ Additional Note on Hydra,” by Maecus M. Haetog, 
M.A., B.Sc., F.L.S. 
Since my last paper I think I have found the clue to the 
false idea referred to. A Hydra that had swallowed a mor- 
sel larger than itself disgorged, as frequently observed, on 
my attempting to take it up for examination. On finding 
it half an hour after, three of its tentacles were turned into 
its digestive cavity, whence they were successively and 
slowly withdrawn. As the mouth closes but slowly after 
disgorging, I imagine the swallowing them to have been 
accidental ; and a similar phenomenon carelessly observed 
may well have given rise to a false interpretation. 
