Mr. P. H. Gosse on new or little-known Marine Animals. 311 



series of miuutej close-set, transverse bristles, which impart to 

 these organs under the microscope some resemblance to the lips 

 of a Cowry shell. I could detect no cilia on these ear-like 

 organs, but the tentacles and the fringing cirri of the mouth are 

 richly ciliated. 



The ultimate segment is furnished with a pair of slender 

 diverging fleshy filaments (fig. 11). 



The colours of this worm are beautiful. The back is purplish- 

 red, passing into lilac, with a fine pearly gloss, the whole thickly 

 studded with white specks. The head, the mouth-fringe, and 

 the whole uuder-parts are white. The tentacles are translucent 

 yellow-olive, with a black core at the base, gradually lost, the 

 surface marked with transverse lines and dashes of opake white. 

 The first pencil of bristles (as has been said above) is golden. 



The animal inhabits a tube about twice its own length and 

 thickness ; but its diameter appears greater than it is, from its 

 manner of construction. It is made of small fragments of shell, 

 minute bits of slate, &c., afiixed, not by their sm-faces, but edge- 

 wise, so that the whole presents a peculiarly rugged bristling 

 appearance, yet not devoid of neatness. Slender filaments of 

 sea- weed, coralline, &c. project here and there ; — and while a 

 large flat stone ballasts the posterior extremity, the anterior is 

 protected by a small limpet shell, which has been seized entire, 

 and most ingeniously fastened so as to form a dome over the 

 animaFs head when partly protruded (fig. 8). Somewhat similar 

 porticoes I have seen in the tubes of Caddis worms, which in- 

 deed this structure closely resembles; and the same object is 

 attained by a large species of Sabellaria common on the Devon- 

 shire coast, which constructs a flat portico of the common sub- 

 stance of the tube. In all cases it is a beautiful instance of ani- 

 mal providence, as well as architecture. 



I did not, however, find that, with all this attention to com- 

 fort, the worm was particular as to which end of his dwelling he 

 made his sally-port ; for after having used the porticoed extre- 

 mity awhile, which of course was the front door, he suddenly 

 appeared (having turned himself meanwhile in some mysterious 

 manner) at the back-door, which thenceforth he persisted in 

 using all the while I had him. He was not at all shy; he would 

 retreat, indeed, if touched, but v/as presently out again. His 

 habit was to protrude a fourth, or even half of his body from the 

 tube, and remain curling and twining the mouth-fringe of cirri, 

 every instant twitching one or other of the tentacles, and as it 

 were striking the water with them, as a crab does with its inner 

 antennae. 



The specimen was taken at Ilfracombe, under a stone at low 

 water, in August ; and lived some days in captivity. 



