64 SAGARTIADjE. 



I think it more than probable that the long deep 

 Atlantic fiords of the sister island, will, on examination, 

 prove at least to equal, if they do not greatly surpass, in 

 the luxuriance of their marine zoology and botany, any- 

 thing that we can boast in England. As a companion to 

 the above, I gladly give an Irish picture of 8. venusta, in 

 situ, sketched by the graphic pen of my friend Dr. E. Per- 

 cival Wright, the able and energetic Director of the Dublin 

 University Museum. 



" Last August, while entomologizing with Messrs. 

 Haliday and Furlong in Killarney and Glengariff, we made 

 one day's excursion down Bantry Bay — a famed spot, but, 

 with all its fame, it has never been worked. Well ; the 

 weather was bad, — very bad ; a thick mizzling rain soon 

 bespangled us with heavy dew-drops : however, pulled by 

 four good oars, we did get on. The tide being right 

 against us, it was hours ere we reached some remarkable 

 caves, — the chief object of our trip. 



" Thousands of the dark olive-green Actinia mesembry- 

 anihemum lined these caves. It was not safe to try to 

 land ; but in places where the sea, owing to shelter, was 

 quiet, I could see the sea-floor covered with an extra- 

 ordinary luxuriance of Actiniae, Sponges, &c. ; — their 

 colours, and forms, of course, distorted by every ripple of 

 the waves. 



" We did land for a few minutes on one spot ; and, even 

 at Tenby, and under St. Catherine's Rock, I never saw so 

 much in the time; and this, though I did not wander 

 from a single rock-pool. In it I saw about four and twenty 

 specimens of Echinus lividus, all comfortably sitting in 

 arm-chairs nicely cut out of stone, and most of them of a 

 lovely purple tint. Down the centre of the pool ran a 

 narrow fissure quite choked with Bunodes crassicornis, 

 which, as is their wont, had managed to gather all the 



