NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 157 



adorn the marshy shallows. The mosses would well repay 

 working np, but I have not looked into them yet. Meantime I 

 append a list of the rarer flowering plants and ferns occurring near 

 Ramelton. 



Zoology. — A sail to Torry island on a calm day in summer 

 would delight the heart of the student of marine zoology. On 

 leaving the shore, the boat glides over a stretch of laminaria- 

 covered bottom, only a few fathoms deep, and through the clear 

 water can be seen the large sea-urchin, Echinus sphaera, prowling 

 over the brown seaweed in the society of numerous star-fishes. 

 Further on you may pass through a shoal of thousands of 

 Medusae, and out in the deep water of the vSound of Torry 

 you are almost sure to meet a shoal of Dog-fish (Spinax acanthias) if 

 the weather is fine. On one occasion we were able to strike them 

 with oars, so numerously were they swimming on the surface, 

 with half of the back out of the water as they sported in hundreds 

 round about. On that same trip, when near the Torry shore, I saw 

 for the first time the beautiful zoophyte, Cyclippe inleus. As 

 these little creatures extended and drew up their long tendril- 

 like tentacles, glowing all the while in bright colours in the 

 evening sunlight, they seemed far more beautiful in the great 

 ocean aquarium than when within the limits of a glass case. 



The estuarine shores of Lough Swilly yield numerous species 

 of mollusca, and which have been well wrought out by the 

 Rev. Mr Falconer of Rathmullan. In some places, as at 

 Fort-Stewart and Ballgreen, the whole littoral zone is covered 

 with the shells of Anomia epMpinum and Fecten striatus, locally 

 called '' Leitrigans," while thousands of valves of the oyster, 

 Ostrea eduUs, recall the days when that succulent bivalve could 

 be bought here for threepence per hundred ! 



In the river Leannan, which flows into Lough Swilly, the 

 salmon-fishing is prolific enough to justify a local merchant 

 in papng <£500 a year for the privilege of netting. The fishing 

 lasts from February till August, this being what is called an 

 early river. I took the temperature of the water for a season, 

 and found it to be a few degrees higher, on an average, than 

 that of some other Irish rivers where the salmon is later. 



As for Mammalia, the Otter (Lutra milgaris) is too common 

 in the river Leannan, preying on the salmon, of which it eats only 

 a mouthful or two from the back. The Squirrel (Sciuriis 



