PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 
79 
people kill them wherever they meet them on land, and poison the stream they are 
found in, by putting lime into the cattle’s drinking pools. In either case the result 
is the same; the reptile taking up his quarters in his victim’s interior—in some 
way, it would puzzle a physiologist to explain how—contrives to live on the 
nutriment taken by the luckless individual or animal, so that, deprived of its 
nourishment, the latter pines away ; nay, so comfortable does the newt make her¬ 
self, that, not content with living by herself, she contrives to bring up a little family. 
Often have I been told of the man who got rid of a mamma newt and six young 
ones by the following recipe, which, I am assured, is infallible :—The patient must 
abstain from all fluids for four-and-twenty hours, and eat only salt meats—at the 
expiration of this time, being very thirsty, he must go and lie open-mouthed over a 
running stream, the noisier the better, when the newts, dying of thirst, and hearing 
the music of the water, cannot resist the temptation, but come forth to drink, 
and, of course, you take care that they do not get back again. The dry ask, in 
addition to this evil character, is also supposed to be endowed with the power of the 
evil eye, children and cows exposed to its gaze wasting away. The Rev. J. Graves 
writes to me, that in Kilkenny it is looked on as “ a devil’s beast,” and, as such, 
burnt. But, to compensate in some measure for its evil qualities, the dry ask is said 
in Dublin to bear in it a charm. Any one desirous of the power of curing scalds or 
burns, has only to apply their tongue along the dry ask’s belly to obtain the power 
of curing these ailments, by the touch of this organ. In the Queen’s County it is 
also used to cure disease, but in a different manner, being put into an iron pot 
under the patient’s bed, it is said to effect a certain cure, though of what disease I 
am not quite clear. Of the other species of newts I have not been able personally 
to find any trace. The warty newt, T. cristatus, rests solely on Mr. Templeton’s 
authority ; it is an inhabitant of every part of England, and might naturally have 
been expected to be found in Ireland. It may, perhaps, yet be found in the 
western wilds, where Mr. Thompson has, from description only, recorded the 
palmated newt, L. palmipes, which has been found both in England and Scotland. 
It is recorded in the catalogue of your museum, but of the locality where it is said 
to be obtained I cannot find any record. Other points of interest, relating to the 
economy of these animals—many of them bearing on Mr. Higginbottom’s paper—I 
hope, at some future period, to lay before you, when I have made further ex¬ 
periments. 
After some interesting discussion, the meeting of the Society was adjourned to 
the month of March. 
MARCH. 10. 1854. 
Dr. Croker, M.R.I.A., in the chair. 
After the usual preliminary business, 
Mr. Andrews stated, that he had received a communication from Mr. Ffenncll, 
Inspecting Commissioner of Fisheries, mentioning that his absence from Dublin 
would prevent him from giving his paper u On' the Propagation of the Salmon, and 
on the Progressive Development of Ova, the results of experiments now carrying on,” 
until next month. 
Mr. Gilbert Sanders read the following paper :— 
ON THE FRUCTIFICATION OF THE GENUS DESMARESTIA. 
At the request of my friend, Dr. Allman, I beg to present to the Dublin Natural 
History Society a short description of the fructification of Desmarestia, as observed 
in the species Ligulata. Dr. Harvey, in both editions of his Manual, and in thePhy- 
cologia—as well as every other algological authority I am acquainted with—records 
the fructification of Desmarestia as unknown. I was recently engaged in micro¬ 
scopically examining the structure of several specimens of Desmarestia ligulata, 
when I observed some very minute brown dots on the pinna I had under the micro¬ 
scope, which were resolved by a higher power into well-defined tubercles, through 
the pellucid walls of which I saw assemblages of angular spores of the usual pink 
colour of the spores of the Floride®. Further examination showed that these 
