174 
REPORTS OF SOCIETIES. 
my opinion. A thrush or a blackbird seizes hold of the worm and 
pulls it out by leverage, but a starling pushes his bill into the ground 
on either side of the worm and pulls it out or bites it off with one 
effort. The quantity of worms I have noticed the starlings take to 
their young is very great—backwards and forwards all day long. 
I have not noticed sparrows attack blackbirds or thrushes when 
collecting.— Wm. Southall. 
iirports of Societies. 
BIRMINGHAM NATURAL HISTORY AND MICROSCOPICAL 
SCCILTY.— General Meeting, April 28tli.—The retiring President 
(Mr. T. H. Waller, B.A., B.Sc.) read an address, which will appear in 
extenso in the “ Midland Naturalist.” Mr. R. W. Chase exhibited a 
male specimen of Somateria spectabilis , the King Eider, shot at the 
Fame Islands, Northumberland. This bird is rarely seen in Great 
Britain, its home being in the Arctic regions. Mr. A. Browetb 
exhibited the common viper or adder, Vipera ferns , from Bourne¬ 
mouth, and a flower spike of Aponogeton distachyus. — General Meet¬ 
ing, May 5tli.—Mr. T. Bolton exhibited Volvox globator , with the 
rotifer Notomata parisitica living inside it, and Phalansterium digi- 
tatum, from King's Norton, an infusorian new to Great Britain. 
—Biological Section, May 12tli. Mr. W. H. France in the chair. 
—Mr.J. E. Bagnall, A.L.S., exhibited and described the follow¬ 
ing:— Taraxacum palustre, Cardamine amara, and Carex pnecox from 
Arbury; Nasturtium amphibium, Alisma lanceolatum from Griff; mosses, 
Didymodon fiexifolium, new to Warwickshire, from Atherstone; 
Eurhynchium striatum, E. piliferum, Tortula Icevipila, Hypnum chryso- 
pliyllum, Fissidcns exilis, Campylopus pyriformis, and other mosses 
from the Anker basin. Also a peculiar abnormal state of one of the 
agarics, in which a group had been transformed or degenerated into a 
mass of beautiful purple filamentous threads, found growing on a 
block of wood in a drain in Buckingham Street. For Mr. J. T. Slatter, 
of Evesham, the morrel, Morchella esculenta, one of the esculent fungi, 
found near Redditch. Mr. T. Bolton, F.R.M.S., Volvox globator, 
infested with the rotifer Notommata parasitica ; Rhinops vitrea, from 
King’s Norton ; and Limnocodium Sowerbei, the fresh-water medusa.— 
General Meeting, May 19. Mr. Waller exhibited a method of cleaning 
No. 1 microscopic glass covers. Mr. Bolton exhibited Syncoryne frutescens, 
the living hydrozoa, with the medusoid planoblasts attached and free. 
Mr. W. B. Grove, B.A., read a paper by Mr. Francis Fowke, F.R.M.S., 
on “The First Discovery of the Comma Bacillus of Cholera,” accom¬ 
panied by photographs, and a number of impressions of similar objects 
from engravings on wood. Mr. Fowke claimed that two English doctors, 
Messrs. Brittan and Swayne, had discovered the Bacillus of Cholera 
during the epidemic of 1849, and figured it in a journal of that time. 
Mr. Grove regretted that he was unable to agree with Mr. Fowke in 
according to the English observers the right of priority. The sketches 
given by them bear no indication of their scale, but, making a guess at 
that from the other particulars given, it will be seen that they represent 
objects much larger than the Bacillus; moreover, the drawings do not 
in any case resemble the Bacillus, which never forms rings, and, when 
septate, is widely different from the only figure they give in which the 
septa are shown. —Sociological Section, May 7tli. The President, Mr. 
W.R. Hughes, F.L.S., read Chapters IY. and V. of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s 
“ Study of Sociology,” viz., on the “ Difficulties of the Social Science ” 
