338 Rev. D. Laudsborough on some Rarities found 



an Alga which seemed new to me. I greedily laid hold of it, and 

 found it no easy matter to detach it from the rock to which it 

 firmly adhered. It turned out to be Codium tomentosum — not 

 rare I believe either in England or Ireland, but so rare with us, 

 that the only Scottish specimen I had ever seen, was one given me 

 by my intelligent friend Dr. Curdie (now in the wilds of Austra- 

 lia), which he had got in the island of Gigha, off Cautyre*. On 

 taking it out of the water I observed a greenish gelatinous ani- 

 mal on it ; but being taken up with my rare plant, I cast the 

 animal into the pool again. I afterwards saw on the Codium two 

 more of the same species, but considerably smaller ; and observing 

 that they were beautifully mottled with azure spots, I deposited 

 them in my vasculum among the branches of Codium. When, on 

 reaching home, I put them into a tumbler of sea-water, I soon 

 saw that I had got a rare and beautiful mollusk, Aplysia, now 

 Acteon viridis, discovered by Col. jMontagu on the Devonshire 

 coast, and described by him in the ' Transactions ^ of the Linnaean 

 Society. Allow me to refer to his description as quoted by my 

 excellent friend Professor Fleming of Aberdeen in his ' British 

 Animals,^ a book which ought to be in the hands of every British 

 natm'ahst. 



As I kept it for nearly a week in the tumbler, where it seemed 

 to browse wdth great satisfaction on the delicate woolly beard of 

 the Codium, I had every opportunity of observing it, and I found 

 that it was even more beautiful than from Montagu's excellent 

 description I could have supposed. Its general colour is green, 

 betwixt grass-green and bottle-green ; but in certain lights it has 

 a considerable shade of rich puce colour of the finest velvet. It 

 is beautifully dotted with azure and with gold. The azure spots 

 are small and numerous on all parts of the body and of the fins, 

 and are precisely of the same brilliant azure as the lines on Pa- 

 tella jjellucida. The golden spots were confined to the upper 

 parts of the body ; they were few in number, but considerably 

 larger and less regular in form than the azure dots. Two of 

 them for instance were oblong, and extended from the ear-like 

 tentacula downi to the eyes, which were placed on what we would 

 call the cuff of the neck, as if to keep watch against the enemies 

 from behind, while it was busy feeding on the rich pastui'C 

 afibrded by the Codium. 



The membrane which acts as fins is of the same colour and 

 substance as the body. A\Tien the fins are raised and meet above, 

 they give it the appearance of being gibbous on the back. More 

 generally however they are a little apart from each other, and in 



* I have since learned from Mr. Thompson of Belfast, that he found se- 

 veral plants of it growing in the greatest perfection in a small rock-pool near 

 Ballantrae (Ayrshire) in the month of August 1839. 



