Davis: NaturaL History REcoRDS 127 
The meeting of January 28, 1922, was held in the Public Mu- 
seum. ; 
Mr. Charles W. Leng read a paper on the nonflowering plants 
of Staten Island, illustrated by blackboard drawings and herbarium 
specimens. The development of plant life from organisms com- 
posed of one cell and difficult to distinguish from animals was 
traced up through the multifarious and beautiful algae, fungi, and 
lichens, which have no leaves or roots, the mosses and hepatics 
with no roots but having leaflike branches, and the ferns and club- 
mosses with leaves and roots. All of the plants included in these 
divisions, it was pointed out, were reproduced by spores. 
The meeting of February 25, 1922, was held in the Public 
Museum. 
Messrs. R. Edgar Bell and Carol Stryker told of having seen a 
saw-whet owl a few days previously in a tree on Elizabeth St., 
West New Brighton. Mr. Stryker reported a redwinged black- 
bird singing at Richmond on February 22, and showed an example 
of fasciation in an ailanthus. 
Mr. Edward J. Burns spoke of a recent visit to the old British 
fort near Richmond, reporting its probable destruction by the 
company excavating sand from the hill. 
Mr. John Rader told of seeing pieces of mica schist from a 
boring made near the water front on Arietta St., Tompkinsville, 
showing an underlying extension of this rock from Robbins Reef. 
The borings indicate the rock to be at least twenty feet thick. 
Mica schist was found near by, at St. George, some years ago, as 
mentioned in the PROCEEDINGS STATEN Is. Assoc. Arts & SCI. 
for November 1905. It is there stated: “ Mr. Davis exhibited 
rock specimens, and read the following note: Last August it was 
‘found necessary to blast the rock under water at the site of the 
new ferry slip at St. George. . Application for specimens was made 
at the engineer’s office, and our fellow member, Mr. Charles FE. 
Trout, kindly furnished those now presented. The rock is a mica 
schist, like much of that on Manhattan Island. It contains garnets, 
and in this instance there was encountered a large seam or vein of 
