Ill 



think that the species will be found not to be so rare as has 

 been supposed. 



In the month of August and September last (1847), at Swanage, in 

 the Isle of Purbeck, 1 met with no zoophyte so abundant, and so 

 generally distributed on almost every kind of submarine object — 

 Fuci, stones, Crustacea, and shells — as the Notamia bursaria. It ap- 

 peared to live and flourish in from three to ten fathoms water, off 

 several miles of the coast, as from Bournemouth to Swanage Bay, but 

 to the southward of this point, as in Durlstone Bay, where the sea is 

 rougher and the bottom more rocky, I did not meet with it. It has 

 also been found, according to Dr. Johnston, on the coast of Devonshire, 

 off the Isle of Wight, and off Essex ; and I have been favoured with 

 specimens of it, collected by Mr. Bowerbank, off Weymouth. 



It appears, therefore, very strange that a species so abundant as this 

 has proved to be in one locality, and which occurs at such widely 

 distant points of the coast, as in Devonshire and Essex, should be 

 so rare elsewhere, at least in sheltered and shallow bays. I would 

 remark, however, that on a careful inspection of all the zoophytes col- 

 lected at various times by dredging, in numerous different and very 

 distant parts of the coasts of England and Wales, by Mr. Bowerbank, 

 I did not observe among them any instauce of the Notamia bursaria, 

 excepting among those species collected by him last autumn at 

 Weymouth. I am not aware that any foreign habitat has as yet been 

 assigned for it. The conditions under which it occurs, present there- 

 fore an interesting subject for inquiry.* 



The earliest notice, as I have before remarked, that we have of this 

 Bryozoon, is in Ellis's Corallines, p. 41, PI. 22, No. 8, and accompany- 

 ing this notice is a figure designed with considerable elegance, and 

 very correct, as far as the means of observation at that time al- 

 lowed. Ellis's description runs thus : — " This most beautiful Pearl- 

 coloured Coralline adheres by small tubes to fucuses, from whence it 

 changes into flat cells ; each single cell like the bracket of a shelf, 

 broad at top, and narrow at bottom : these are placed back to back in 

 pairs, one above another, on an extremely slender tube, that seems 

 to run through the middle of the branches of the whole Coralline. 

 The cells are open at top. Some of them have black spots in them, 



* In the course of the present autumn I have met with the Notamia bursaria in 

 great abundance off the East end of tbe Isle of Wight. It has also, I believe, been 

 found at Southend and Ramsgate. 



l2 



