BOOK NOTICES 69 



in Das Tierreich). It seems, therefore, highly probable that 

 Montagu's Cellularia bassani — a name which, by the way, one looks 

 for in vain in Canestrini's work — is a hypopial stage of this mite. 

 Probably the best time to look for the hypopus would be the 

 gannet's moulting season, this subcutaneous stage of the mite being 

 possibly a provision against being thrown off with the feathers. — 

 William Evans, Edinburgh. 



The Common Spoon-Worm, Echiurus pallasii, on the 

 coast of Aberdeenshire. — The damage caused amongst littoral 

 marine organisms by the recent storm brings to mind similar 

 devastation caused some years ago by a strong and continuous 

 north-easterly gale. After the storm I visited, on the 19th November 

 1905, the exposed stretch of sand which lies to the north of Don- 

 mouth in Aberdeenshire, and amongst much sea-wrack at high-tide 

 mark, I was surprised to find small, flattened, ochre-yellow bodies 

 wriggling upon the sand. These turned out to be the spoon-like 

 proboscides of specimens of the Gephyrean worm Echiurus pallasii ', 

 Guerin Meneville, which lay strewn in hundreds, or more probably 

 thousands, upon the lower reaches of the beach. The "worm" 

 apparently lives in abundance in the soft sand of Aberdeen Bay 

 about low-tide mark, although disturbance by the storm was required 

 to reveal its presence. The species occurs in the North Sea, the 

 English Channel, the Sound, North Atlantic, and in Christiania Fjord, 

 but Scottish records are wofully sparse. Dr Thomas Scott has 

 found it in the stomachs of fishes caught by trawl-net in the Firth of 

 Forth, and has occasionally taken it in St Andrews Bay ; and Prof. 

 W. C. MTntosh records that it is "abundant amongst the debris, on 

 the West Sands [of St Andrews] after storms," the place where Prof. 

 Edward Forbes found the first British specimen in 1840. The 

 Aberdeen specimen before me, which, preserved in alcohol, is of a 

 yellow ochre colour much paler than it originally was, differs from 

 typical specimens in possessing eight bristles in each of the two rings, 

 one more than is normal in the posterior ring. — James Ritchie, 

 Royal Scottish Museum. 



BOOK NOTICES. 



A Naturalist on Desert Islands, by Percy R. Lowe, B.A., M.B. 

 London : Witherby & Co. Price 7s. 6d. 



Books relating to the exploration of little-known islands 

 have a charm of their own, more especially to those interested in 

 natural history. Dr Lowe gives us in this welcome volume a graphic 



