220 Transactions. — Zoology. 



Tunicaries, or "sea-squirts" as they are termed, may often 

 be found sticking to the rocks cast up by the tide on the 

 Sturm's Gully beach. I have also dredged them up in the 

 Inner Harbour, fast to the dead shells and fragments of the 

 great Pinna neozelanica. In form they are a cone of a tough, 

 leathery substance, pale-brown in colour ; the cone is filled 

 with sea- water, which they expel with considerable force when 

 captured, thus earning their name of " sea-squirt." 



The next step downwards is to a family familiar to every 

 one in the form of shells — the Mollusca. I will not attempt 

 any detailed description of this great class. As in the case 

 of the birds, our joint possession of fresh and salt water, dry 

 land and swamp, gives us a splendid variety, from the waifs 

 of the open sea that are whirled ashore with gales, and the 

 hosts that creep and crawl between the limits of high and 

 low tide, to the familiar brown-mantled pest of our gardens. 

 Between beach and hill, salt tide and fresh-water stream, 

 we can find, besides the types of settled, orderly habits, 

 strange intermediates, sea-shells climbing so far shorewards 

 that it is only a daily splash of spray that they need, land- 

 shells turning again to their original water life till they can 

 take air at one inhalation to last them for many hours' sub- 

 mersion in the depths of the river-pools. 



Below the Mollusca comes that great group the Arthropoda, 

 consisting of the Insecta, the Myriapoda, the Onychophora, the 

 Arachnida, and Crustacea. Of all these classes save one (the 

 Onychophora) we can find abundant representatives in the 

 small patch of untouched native ground that I have already 

 referred to— Sturm's Gully. Beetles, flies, butterflies and 

 moths, and other members of the insect class abound. Under 

 dead twigs and leaf-mould are Myriapoda in plenty. These 

 are mostly of the harmless "thousand-legged" species, whose 

 only protection appears to be to curl themselves into a spiral 

 and emit an evil-smelling fluid ; but one occasionally gets one 

 of the "hundred-legs," or " Meggy-monny-legs," who, with 

 his well-armed, fierce appearance, has gained the reputation of 

 being poisonous. Of course, "thousand-legs" and " hundred- 

 legs" are both great exaggerati >ns. I believe the Arabs come 

 nearest to scientific correctness in calling them " arba-wal- 

 arbarin," which, translated, signifies "forty-four legs," some 

 of the tropical species having forty-two legs, and, counting the 

 poison-claws, forty -four. The Persians call them " worm- 

 rosaries." 



Spiders hurry away, carrying their precious silken bags of 

 eggs. But a spider-like form amongst them, on being dis- 

 turbed, shuts all his legs tight upon his body and shams 

 death. If you examine this animal you will find that his 

 abdomen is formed of a series of hard horny rings, like many 



