Fatma of the Clyde. 193 



modesty almost excessive restrained him. Yet, had 

 he been righting for his own hand, so to speak, he 

 might have done less real service to science than he 

 has done by his ever-ready generosity in helping and 

 encouraging others. 



Many of his fellow-members in the Glasgow society 

 must have marvelled at the long succession of strange 

 and distinct objects which he produced for their in- 

 spection zoophytes, like the remarkable Virgularia 

 mirabiliSj sponges like Halichondria ventilabrun, 

 measuring "twelve inches across the mouth of the 

 funnel," and withal, fishes, ascidians, shells, nudi- 

 branchs, echinoderms, sea-cucumbers, annelids, crabs, 

 shrimps, cumaceans, entomostraca, corals, sea-ane- 

 mones and sea-weeds, not to speak of foraminifera and 

 fossils these great and varied gatherings being from 

 the Clyde and its neighbourhood, in the fauna of 

 which many of the species had never previously been 

 recorded. 



In a joint paper by Dr. John Grieve and Mr. David 

 Robertson, " On the Marine Zoology and Botany of 

 Loch Ryan, Bay of Luce, and Portpatrick, from 

 observations made during a short excursion in 1861," 

 the two authors give a very graphic and accurate 

 account of those strange reefs of honey-combed sand, 

 which must have excited the wonder of many a visitor 

 to the seaside. The reefs are the work of a marine 

 worm. 



"This annelid is the Sabellaria alveolata. It is 

 nearly allied to the Pectinaria Belgica, commonly 

 found on our sandy coasts, each individual of which 

 lives in a single tube formed of grains of sand a self- 

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