NUCULA. 223 



" Annals of Natural History." Although an inhabitant of 

 the deeps of the Mediterranean, it is probably a Nucula of 

 northern origin. On our coasts it has been taken alive in 

 thirty and forty-five fathoms, dark muddy bottom, off llaza 

 in the Hebrides, and north of that island in one hundred 

 and fifty fathoms, but dead ; also in one hundred fathoms 

 in Loch Fyne (M' Andrew and E. F.). Mr. Barlee has 

 taken it at Oban, and at Tarbert in Loch Fyne. Mr. 

 Clark and Mr. Warren have taken it in Dublin Bay, and 

 it has been also dredged on the south-west coast of Ire- 

 land (M' Andrew). 



Loven records it as a Swedish shell. It occurs fossil in 

 the Pleistocene Tertiaries of Italy, and living at great 

 depths in the iEgean. 



N. tenuis, Montagu. 



Abbreviated-ovate, fragile, compressed ; inner margin not cre- 

 nated. 



Plate XLVII. fig. 6, and (Animal) plate P. fig. 5. 



Area tenuis, Mont. Test. Brit. Suppl. p. 56, pi. 29, f. 1. — Ti*rt. Conch. Diction. 



p. 11. — Dillwyn, Recent Shells, vol. i. p. 246. — Index Testa- 



ceolog. pi. 10, Area, f. 45. 

 Nucula „ Turt. Dithyra Brit. p. 177. — Flem. Brit. Anim. p. 402. — Mac- 



oili.iv. Moll. Aberd. p. 244. — Brit. Marine Conch, p. 105. — 



Brown, Illust. Conch. G. B. p. 85, pi. 33, f. 13.— Gould, Invert. 



Massach. p. 105. — Hanl. Recent Shells, vol. i. p. 171, pi. 10, 



Area, f. 45. 

 Nucula tenera (fossil), Wood, Mag. N. Hist. 1840, pi. 14, f. 2. 



This, by far the most fragile and depressed of our British 

 Nucula, is also less triangular in its outline than the mass 

 of its congeners, having its contour, which varies greatly in 

 extent of obliquity, of a more or less abbreviated ovate 



