Miscellaneous. 445 



in which he shows that the animal is provided with a rudimentary 

 fin on each side of the terminal gland, which had been rubbed off or 

 otherwise destroyed, so that their base appears to form part of the 

 gland itself in Mr. Cuming's specimen. 



The paper above referred to, being published in a w^ork chiefly 

 devoted to anatomy and medicine, had escaped my knowledge. 



I will shortly send you a copy of the figures, with some other 

 particulars, for the purpose of completing the history of this interest- 

 ing genus. Believe me, my dear Sir, yours very truly, 



15th May, 1845. J. E. Gray. 



[The observations of M. de Blainville were noticed by Mr. Owen 

 in one of his Hunterian Lectures, published in 1843, of which the 

 following is an extract ; — 



" The genus in which the shell most nearly resembles that of the 

 tetrabranchiate Cephalopods, belongs to the Spirula. A few muti- 

 lated specimens which had reached this country during this present 

 century had demonstrated it to be an internal shell, and the more 

 perfect specimen dissected by M. de Blainville in 1839, proved it to 

 have the characteristic organization of the Dibranchiate order, and 

 to possess, as Peron had indicated, the eight short arms and the two 

 long tentacula of the Decapodous tribe." — Ed.] 



ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF DORIS. BY C. W. PEACH*. 



[With a Plate.] '^'*) 



Goran Haven, Cornwall, April 1845. 



Having in the early part of 1844 noticed white-spotted jelly-like 



films suspended from the rocks in the cove near my residence, my 



curiosity was excited to know what they were. On the 18th of 



January of that year, I observed that they were more plentiful than 



I ever before saw them, and on rocks considerably nearer high water 



mark. I also found a great number of a small kind of Doris on the 



same rock ; not having seen them there before, I began to suspect that 



in all probability they had something to do with the above-mentioned 



films. I took several of them and placed them in a vessel containing 



sea- water ; the next morning I found that a pair of them had fixed 



their ova to the side of the dish, in every respect agreeing with those 



found on the rock, thus confirming my suspicions. They shed their 



ova in pairs. I took also with the animal several pieces of their ova 



from the rock and kept them in a glass of sea-w^ater, and on the 5th of 



February found that the young had come forth in thousands. I just 



mention, that no mistake might be made, that I always filtered the 



water I supplied the ova with through three or four folds of linen ; and 



moreover, 1 saw the young moving about in the ova long before they 



came out, and also observed others there some time after their elder 



brethren had left. These young are contained in a Nautilus-like 



shell so small (indeed a mere speck), as not to be made out as such 



by the unassisted eye. The animal is furnished with two arras of a 



* Read at the last Annual Meeting of the Royal Institution of Cornwall. 



