Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/251

Rh tendency to deepen, as the limpets apparently graze again over a grooved surface. The total amount of chalk thus annually denuded by all these creatures must be very considerable, though what is removed by an individual limpet appears insignificant. It was explained how mechanically, and not by any chemical agency, the limpets sink pits, which are often basin-shaped hollows, considerably below the level of the rim of the animal's shell.

May 2, 1878.— Dr. R.C.A. F.L.S., in the chair.

The following gentlemen were elected Fellows of the Society:—M. Cesar Chambre, Broad Street, E.C.; and Thomas Comber, Esq., Redcliffe, Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire.

The Foreign Members elected by ballot to fill the vacancies of those deceased during last year were:—Teodoro Carnel, Professor of Botany and Director of the Botanic Garden, Pisa; Dr. Ernest Cosson, of Paris; Dr. George Engelman, of St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.; Dr. Edouard Fenzl, Professor of Botany at the University and Director of the Botanic Garden at Vienna; and Dr. Julius Sachs, Professor of Botany at the University and Director of the Botanic Garden, Würzburg—all highly distinguished for their origiual researches and published labours, chiefly on Physiological and Systematic Botany.

There were no zoological papers read at this meeting, but a memorandum in a letter from the Rev. H.H. Higgins, of Liverpool, was laid before the Society. In this he says:—"I enclose a rough drawing of what I take to be a Tubularian Hydroozoon allied to Clava. The drawing (exhibited) is of natural size. The specimen itself came into my hands in a curious way. Not long ago I saw, in a Berlin Catalogue, a work on New Zealand Zoophytes, which, with several other books, I ordered. The former turned out to be, not a printed volume, but a collection of dried specimens, one of which is the subject of the drawing. They were labelled, 'Northern Island, New Zealand, Andrew Sinclair, M.D.; from William Gourlie, Glasgow.' Besides the object in question, among the specimens are a few fine things, one of which is an arborescent Hydractinia, which Mr. Thomas Higgin, of Huyton, is describing. If the enclosed drawing of the Hydroozoon represents a Clava, it is of enormous size, though in its dry compressed state I cannot say much about it. The hydranth is club-shaped, the hydrocaulus about ten inches—in another specimen some sixteen inches—in length. The tentacles are squamiform, covering the hydranth. The sporosacs are absent, being, I suppose, deciduous. There was a Tubularian Hydroozoon, found by the ' Challenger,' about four feet in length, a short notice of which, if I remember aright, appeared in 'Nature.'"

Mr. J.C. Galton called attention to an object of about the size of a split hazel, obtained in a garden near Barking Priory, and which was