8 LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
perature of the sea, to be taken by the curator of the 
station and recorded in a series of weekly reports, which 
give, in addition, a statement of the work being carried on 
from day to day. These reports have been made with 
regularity: a specimen week is shown on the opposite page. 
It is interesting to be able to record that the American 
Clam (Venus mercenaria) specimens of which, it will be 
remembered, were laid down nearly twenty years ago, 
and then again in 1883, by Mr. F. Archer and Mr. T. J. 
Moore,* on several spots in Liverpool Bay, and have not 
since been heard of in the neighbourhood, has turned up 
this summer living near Beaumaris. Mr. C. H. Chadwick, 
of Manchester, found a living specimen, and reports that 
dead shells are not uncommon. 
On an excursion of the Biological Society last June to 
Hilbre Island, while crossing the great stretch of wet 
sand which lies in the estuary of the Dee, it was pointed 
out by Mr. F. Archer that the surface of the sand 
was covered in some places with vast numbers of the 
small mollusc Hydrobia ulve. Some of these were brought 
back to the laboratory in their wet sand; and, on being 
put into a dish of sea-water, the molluscs were found next 
day to have crawled out of the sand, and I then noticed 
that nearly every specimen had several little rounded 
excrescences scattered over the surface of its shell. On 
examining these under the microscope it was found that 
each was a little mass of small sand-grains in the centre 
of which was a clear jelly containing several segmenting 
ova or young embryos. These were undoubtedly molluscan 
eggs, as I kept them alive until one or two had reached a 
‘“‘veliger’’ stage, but did they belong to the Hydrobia or 
to some other mollusc? No other mollusc was, however, 
* See Mr. Moore’s paper in the First Report of the Fauna of Liverpool 
Bay, 1886, p. 368. 
