BiOLOGt 

 RA 



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THIS was my eighth expedition to the northern extremity of our seas, and 

 occupied the whole of the summer. It was not so successful as those in some 

 previous years, owing to the stormy state of the weather. While my friends 

 in England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland were enjoying calm sunshine, our 

 climate was exactly the reverse ; and the persevering course of the wind 

 (from north-west to south-west) prevented our doing much at sea. This 

 part of the North Atlantic is notoriously subject to broken weather, it being 

 the point where the warm air induced by the Gulf-stream and westerly 

 winds meets the cold air brought down by the arctic current. The fauna of 

 the Shetland waters, however, is by no means exhausted. Every expedition 

 has produced novelties, not only in the Mollusca, but in all other depart- 

 ments of marine zoology. 



On the present occasion I obtained, at a depth of 120 fathoms, a living 

 specimen and a larger dead one of a fine species of Pleurotoma, P. carinata 

 of Bivona. It was originally described as a Calabrian fossil ; Jan and Bel- 

 lardi have given it from the Upper Tertiaries of North Italy, the former un- 

 der the name of Fvsu-s modiolus ; and Searles Wood records a single specimen 



