182 MIDLAND UNION OF NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETIES. 
Tlie annual meeting then closed with votes of thanks to the 
late president, and to the treasurer and secretaries, for their 
services during the past year. A vote of thanks was passed to the 
editors of the “ Midland Naturalist ” for their services in connection 
with the journal, which, it was pointed out, had been very arduous 
owing to the lack of contributions to that journal. 
CONVERSAZIONE. 
A conversazione was held in the evening at Mason College and 
was attended by about 800 guests. There was an interesting 
exhibition. The following objects, in addition to the permanent 
contents of the Botanical Laboratory and the Zoological Museum, 
themselves comprehensive and admirably arranged, were shown 
by members of the societies: — The President, a collection of 
Egyptian objects, made during a recent visit ; Miss King, Messrs. 
A. H. Martineau and R. W. Chase, wasps’ and hornets’ nests ; 
Mr. F. Shrive, a series of all the British reptiles ; Mr. H. Parker, 
living reptiles (including poisonous foreign snakes, European lizards, 
green tree-frogs, salamanders, and several species of toads); 
Mr. Joseph Groold, of Nottingham, his twin elliptic pendulum ; 
Miss Gingell, Miss Laurie, of Cheltenham, Miss Webb, Professor 
Hillhouse, and Messrs. J. W. Oliver, S. White, W. Harrison, H. E. 
Forrest, and H. J. Sands, display of fresh wild flowers ; Professor 
Lapworth, fossils from the Nuneaton district, and from Dudley; Mr. 
F. lies, photomicrographs as lantern transparencies, taken and toned 
by his new patent process; Mr. H. Hawkes, natural history objects, 
mounted as magic lantern slides ; Mr. R. W. Chase, eighteen cases 
of British birds, containing wheatear, black redstart, Dartford 
warbler, Lapland bunting, shore lark, spotted crake, Baillon’s crake, 
gray plover, Kentish plover, dotterels, lapwing, red-necked pliala- 
rope, gray phalarope, great snipe, pectoral sandpiper, knots 
(summer), knots (winter), sanderling, and fourteen domes of British 
birds in the down; Mr. H. Johnson, Dudley fossils; Mr. W. R. 
Hughes, diagram and microscopic specimens, illustrating the 
migration of the eyes in the flat fishes ; Mr. J. Madison, land 
and fresh-water shells, collected within a radius of twelve miles 
of Birmingham; Mr. T. V. Hodgson, microscopic exhibition 
August, 1893 . 
