Mr. W. Thompson's Additions to the Fauna of Ireland. 383 



not without some practical foundation. I was, however, at the 

 same time convinced that the observations from which it had 

 been inferred that the animal always causes death by the abs- 

 traction of blood, must have been very superficially made. I 

 have been assured by persons well-versed in such matters, that 

 even the rabbit is frequently destroyed by a wound in the neck ; 

 and I recollect well, when a schoolboy, of having had a young 

 rabbit destroyed by a weasel, and of the astonishment I felt at 

 seeing upon it, when dead, no mark of injury of any kind, but 

 the mysterious bloody patch and small wound on the side of the 

 neck, described above. The truth seems to be, that whenever 

 the Ferret attacks an animal which it is capable of mastering by 

 main force, it despatches him, not by blood-sucking, but by the 

 most speedy and merciful of all modes of inflicting death — 

 piercing the upper part of the spinal marrow ; but that when it 

 is opposed to animals of large size and strength superior to its 

 own, it alters its mode of warfare, seizing them where opportunity 

 offers, and clinging to them till they expire from loss of blood, 

 pain, and exhaustion of strength. 



XLIII. — Additions to the Fauna of Ireland, including a few species 

 unrecorded in that of Britain ; — with the description of an ap- 

 parently new Glossiphonia. By William Thompson, Pres. 

 Nat. Hist, and Philos. Society of Belfast. 



[Continued from p. 315*.] 



MOLLUSCA. 



Nassa varicosa, Turt. (sp.). Tritonia varicosa, Turt. Zool. Jour, 

 vol. ii. p. 365. pi. 13. fig. 7. 



A dead specimen was dredged (depth twelve to fifteen fathoms) off 

 the south entrance to Bantry Bay in May 1846 by Mr. MacAndrew. 



Pleurotoma teres, Forb. Ann. Nat. Hist. vol. xiv. p. 412. pi. 2. 



fig- 3. 



One dead specimen was dredged from aboutfourteen fathoms inBir- 

 terbuy Bay, county of Galway, in the summer of 1845 by Mr. Barlee. 

 This gentleman — when accompanied by Mr. Jeffreys — obtained in 

 the same bay very fine specimens of the rare Pleurotoma Boothii, 

 Smith (sp.) — Fusus Boothii, Wern. Mem. vol. viii. p. 98. pi. 1. f. 1. 



* As the marks of doubt placed after Bonaparte's Sandpiper and the 

 Sword-fish, in the first part of this communication (p. 311, 314) might con- 

 vey the erroneous impression that there is uncertainty respecting the spe- 

 cies, it seems to me desirable to state, that there is no doubt on that subject* 

 Those marks should rather have been placed before the name as expressive 

 of uncertainty about the admission of the species into the Irish Fauna. 



