scholarly journals I. Note respecting the circulation of gasteropodous Mollusca and the supposed aquiferous apparatus of the Lamellibranchiata

1860 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 192-196

A memoir upon the aquiferous system and the oviducts of Lamellibranchiate Mollusks by Messrs. Rolleston and Robertson, was read before the Royal Society at the Meeting on the 3rd of February, 1859. The abstract of this memoir, contained in the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ reached me in the month of July; and I was not a little surprised to find that a structure which I had so elaborately stu­died in the course of my various journeys to the sea-shore, and which I had carefully described in a number of species, was something quite different from what I had imagined it to be. "Without entering into minute anatomical details, which would not tend to elucidate the question, I find that Messrs. Rolleston and Robertson consider that the organs, the ducts, and the orifices supposed to be the ovaries or their excretory ducts, are, in fact, nothing but an aquiferous appa­ratus, and that the openings placed on each side of the foot are the excretory orifices of this system. They discover elsewhere the ducts whose office is to convey away the products of the genital glands. The enunciation of an opinion so opposed to what I, in common with many other authors, had maintained, seemed to require a recur­rence to direct observation. But on repeating my examination of Cardium edule , Tellina solidula , Mactra stultorum and Donax anatina , I have precisely verified my previous conclusions. On throwing injections into the genital orifices, the sexual glands have become turgid; and on examining fragments of such injected genital glands microscopically, the injected substance was seen mixed with the ova or spermatozoa. These facts may be observed with especial ease in Cardium edule .

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard L. Hodgkinson ◽  
John E. Whittaker

ABSTRACT: In spite of his many other interests, Edward Heron-Allen also worked for nearly 50 years as a scientist on minute shelled protists, called foraminifera, much of it in an unpaid, unofficial capacity at The Natural History Museum, London, and notably in collaboration with Arthur Earland. During this career he published more than 70 papers and obtained several fellowships, culminating in 1919 in his election to the Royal Society. Subsequently, he bequeathed his foraminiferal collections and fine library to the Museum, and both are housed today in a room named in his honour. In this paper, for the first time, an assessment of his scientific accomplishments is given, together with a full annotated bibliography of his publications held in the Heron-Allen Library. This is part of a project to produce a bibliography of his complete publications, recently initiated by the Heron-Allen Society.


The deed of conveyance of 1722, by which Sir Hans Sloane gave the Society of Apothecaries control of their ‘Physick Garden at Chelsey’ in perpetuity, forged an important link between the Apothecaries and the Royal Society, one that has lasted to the present day. For the next 75 years the Apothecaries paid an annual tribute of dried plant specimens to the Royal Society as proof that they were continuing to use the garden for its proper purpose. These specimens, which have survived the centuries with remarkably little damage, now provide important evidence of what was being grown in the garden at the time and may also be nomenclaturally important as representing plants given botanical names by Philip Miller in 1768. A careful search in the herbarium collections of the Department of Botany in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, where the Royal Society specimens are now held, has resulted in the location of all but a small number of the 3750 specimens that were sent. Tracing them has not been easy for a number of reasons, not least because they are now dispersed among the several million specimens in the Museum’s collections. The names of the plants used by the Apothecaries in the lists that were the starting point for the search were those current at the time, hence of pre-Linnaean character, and had first to be linked to present-day names before the work could begin. Some lists of names were found to be inaccurate and some were entirely misleading.


2022 ◽  
Vol 128 (5) ◽  
pp. 167-198
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Pękacka-Falkowska

The article discusses the hitherto unknown correspondence between the Danzig (present-day Gdańsk) botanist Jacob Breyne, his son Johann Philipp Breyne, and James Petiver in the last decade of the seventeenth century. Their correspondence documents contacts between one of the most important naturalists of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the second half of the seventeenth century and members of the Royal Society. The content of the letters reveals how books, naturalia and various artefacts circulated between Western and East-Central Europe. It also reveals the principles of reciprocity and friendship followed by those who conducted inquiries into natural history.


Ornis Svecica ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Thord Fransson ◽  
Lina Jansson ◽  
Tuomo Kolehmainen ◽  
Thomas Wenninger

Recoveries of birds ringed in Sweden from the period 1990–2017 were used to analyse the occurrence of collisions with power lines and electrocutions. Out of more than 10,000 recoveries of birds found dead with finding circumstances mentioned, 8.6% was associated with power line constructions. The number of species involved was 51 and high proportions were especially evident in some species of owls and raptors. The overall proportion of recoveries caused by collision / electrocution shows a significant decrease over time. A decrease over time in the proportions of electrocution and collision was also evident when analysing finding circumstances in four species where corpses were sent to the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Information about the power line system in Sweden during the period 2007–2016 shows that the length of local power lines has decreased with about 21% during a ten-year period and that underground cables have increased with 28% during the same period. The results show that collisions with power lines have decreased more than electrocutions and this may imply that there are still many places where birds are at risk of being electrocuted.


The eminent Georgian scientist John MacCulloch (1773—1835) is remembered today chiefly as a practical geologist but his many publications show that he also made notable contributions in such fields as chemistry, medicine and natural history; indeed his wide scientific competence seems to have been a significant factor in his election to Fellowship of the Royal Society, for it is noted on his certificate of application that he was ‘very conversant with various branches of science’. Elsewhere it is recorded that MacCulloch ‘was as willing to impart information as he was eager to acquire it’ and in this context his activities as a teacher in the East India Company’s Military Seminary at Addiscombe deserve study: first, because the later part of his life, during which he taught geology, is poorly understood; and secondly, since his last two geological books were affected by his teaching commitment at Addiscombe. In this paper MacCulloch’s connexion with the college is investigated using hitherto unpublished manuscript records and some of his geological work is re-assessed in terms of the facts revealed.


1731 ◽  
Vol 37 (421) ◽  
pp. 219-220

It is not my Intention to enter into a long Detail of what I have hitherto performed in Natural History, both in general, and that of Swisserland in particular, left I might seem guilty of Vanity even in merely relating it.


1960 ◽  
Vol 92 (12) ◽  
pp. 891-897
Author(s):  
Eugene Munroe

The purposes of this paper are: (1) to validate a considerable number of lectotype selections made in the course of a revisional study of the Scopariinae, and (2) to give, for the convenience of students, a list of Meyrick holotypes and lectotypes in the collection of the British Museum (Natural History), which now contains the types of all but five of the large number of species described by Meyrick in this group. The Hawaiian species have been omitted as volume 8 of Zimmerman's Insects of Hawaii gives full particulars of the type material of Hawaiian Scopariinae, including Zimmerman's lectotype selections.


1695 ◽  
Vol 19 (217) ◽  
pp. 115-124

V. An account of books. I. An essay toward a natural history of the earth, and terrestrial bodies, especially minerals: As also of the sea, rivers, and springs. With an account of the universal deluge, and of the effects that it had upon the earth. By John Woodward, M. D. Professor of Physick in Gresham College, and Fellow of the Royal Society. Printed for Ric. Wilkin at the King's Head in St. Paul's Church-yard. 1695. Octavo. 2. An account of a paper, entituled, archibaldi pitcarnii, M. D. dissertatio de Febribus, &c. The Author of this Book having with great Industry, and no less Success, made Enquiry into many considerable Parts of Nature, hath thought fit here to set forth an Account of several of his Observations, and of certain Conclusions which he hath drawn from them, whereof many are indeed of great weight and moment, but all in a compendious manner, as intending this Discourse only as a Prœlude to one-much larger, and to comply with the Importunities of some Persons of Worth, who .requested a brief Account of these things from him, for their present Satisfaction, until his Affairs should permit the compleating of his Greater Work, which he promiseth, with a further Proof both of these, and of others not yet proposed.


2000 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A. B. Leschen

A review of the literature shows that predation on Hemiptera (mainly Sternorrhyncha) by Coleoptera is widespread in the order, but little understood, even from a biocontrol perspective. Phylogenetic information indicates that feeding on hemipterans evolved predominantly in lineages containing fungus feeders (Derodontidae, Silvanidae, Laemophloeidae, Nitidulidae, Endomychidae, Anthribidae) and whose ancestors were fungus feeders (Coccinellidae) or were sap feeders (cetoniine Scarabaeidae). Other predators on Hemiptera whose ancestry could not be determined unequivocally (predatory/phytophagy or phytophagy/mycophagy) are included in families that contain a large number of species that are mycophagous (Trogossitidae, Mycetophagidae, and Salpingidae). Because changes in diet to feeding on hemipterans have repeatedly occurred in mycophagous taxa, and this shift is not present in other largely predatory groups of beetles, it is presumed that certain preconditions, which have promoted this specialised behaviour, only exist in these lineages. Ancestral associations with sooty moulds that grow on honeydew may have mediated shifts from mycophagy to predation, rather than having ancestors that were predatory and attracted to a novel prey type. Natural history data show that species that prey on Hemiptera also feed on honeydew and sooty moulds and a model is presented for the host shift from mycophagy to feeding on Hemiptera. An annotated list of Hemiptera prey for beetles (exclusive of Coccinellidae) includes records for species in the families Adelgidae, Aleyrodidae, Aphididae, Coccidae, Diaspididae, Kermesidae, Kerriidae, Margarodidae, Membracidae, Phoenicococcidae, and Pseudococcidae.


1862 ◽  
Vol 152 ◽  
pp. 1087-1135 ◽  

While the arrangement of other branches of natural history has occupied the attention of some of the most laborious and talented naturalists of every age, the Spongiadæ appear to have scarcely attracted sufficient attention to excite any writer on natural history to a serious attempt at a systematic classification. This neglect has not arisen from any incapacity for a definite arrangement on the part of the Spongiadæ, as the organic differential characters of the numerous groups into which, by careful examination, they may be readily divided are as varied and as widely removed from each other as are the strikingly distinct and well defined divisions of the Corallidæ; and the number of species I believe to be very much greater than those of the latter class. Of British species alone I am already acquainted with 150 or more; and new ones are continually being discovered by the aid of the dredge. It becomes therefore a matter of necessity that we should classify their permanent varieties of structure, and found on them a series of orders, suborders, and genera, and through these subdivisions become enabled to recognize more readily the very numerous species of these animals which abound in all parts of the world. De Blainville proposed to include the whole of the Spongiadæ under the designation of Amorphozoa; but this term is objectionable, as all sponges cannot be considered as shapeless—on the contrary, many genera and species exhibit much constancy in their form. Neither can the term be justly applied to their internal structure, as we find in Grantia , Geodia , Tethea , and other genera regular and systematical structures which are very far removed from shapelessness. I have therefore thought it advisable to adopt Dr. Grant’s designation of Porifera, a term which embraces the whole of the Spongiadæ, and which is truly descriptive of the most essential general action of the animal's power and mode of imbibing nutriment, which in every species with which I am acquainted is, by a series of minute pores distributed over the external membrane of the sponge.


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