of the Species, ILep&s iviatifera. 57 



On examination, I found that the portion of wood, to which 

 these myriads were attached, is the rugged bark of a branch 

 of the spruce fir ; and several captains of vessels have pro- 

 nounced it to come from Newfoundland, being drifted over 

 in the curi^nt and gales. They and others conceive it to 

 have been carried southward, towards the gulf stream, into a 

 warmer latitude, where the Zepas adhered to it ; and that the 

 wood then set across from the Azores.* That this may have 

 been the case, is likely, as well from the state as from the 

 nature of the wood ; for it is not only saturated with water, 

 so as to render it near the bark like the pulp of a paper-mill, 

 but, for an inch or two, it is pierced through in holes, of 

 about half the size of the pedicles of the largest barnacles ; 

 which holes, however, have been formed by some Teredo, 

 before the jLepas took possession, as the shell of that creature 

 is found in the thicker part of the branches : and, therefore, 

 I conclude the wood has been very long in the water ; drift- 

 ing about, perhaps, for a year or two in the ocean, till driven 

 hither to form the subject of a page of Mr. Loudon's equally 

 far- voyaging miscellany. A naval officer, to whom I have 

 shown them, recognised these creatures as having been seen 

 by him, attached to logs of mahogany adrift in the Bay of 

 Biscay. 



There are two or three particulars in which the specimens 

 before me differ from the species described by Dr. Wea- 

 therill, in V. 339 — 342. They agree in all the others; for 

 which the best description is his own. 



The pedicles are not so long as those of Dr. Weatherill's, but 

 they are distinct ; and yet have, in one or two instances, very 



* That the wood in question set in from the Atlantic is likely ; for the 

 direction from Cape Finisterre to our coast would not be far from the 

 parallel of that between the Norman Islands and Beachy Head : and the 

 spices of a vessel wrecked near Jersey have, a week or two since, been 

 picked up along the beach at Brighton, the air about which was perfumed 

 with rich odours. Within a few days, fifty-four large casks of foreign 

 brandy have been picked up off St. Adhelm's Head, and brought into Poole : 

 the remains of the cargo of some vessel, probably from Charente, wrecked 

 at sea, and brought hither by a current from the south-west. A horse and 

 his accoutrements, doubtless the steed of a French coast-guardsman, was 

 washed ashore, in the early part of the late November gales, at Dungeness . 

 These facts are introduced here for the sake of registering them. — 

 W. B. C. Feb. 10. 1834. 



A similar mass of wood, so covered by iepas, was found, at the same 

 time, off" Portsmouth. 



To this date, the brandy has not been claimed. It is in ca&fcs y i\ot in tubs; 

 they appear to have been long in the water, and much damaged, as if the 

 vessel they came from had been broken up at the bottom of the sea. My 

 own opinion is, that they have floated from the West Indies. It would not 

 be the first instance of the kind on record. — W. B. C. Dec. 4. 1834. 



