THE ANNALS 
MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY, 
[FOURTH SERIES.] 
No. 4. APRIL 1868. 
<2 
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XXIX.— On Lithodomous Annelids. By E. Ray LANKESTER, 
Junior Student of Christ Church, Oxford. 
[Plate XT.] 
Two years since, my friend Mr. Charles Stewart, then residing 
at Plymouth, told me of certain Annelids which were in the 
habit of perforating limestone rock in that neighbourhood, 
and which he had found, when removed from their excava- 
tions and placed on blue litmus-paper, to give a strongly acid 
reaction. Soon after this, I received, by his kindness, specimens 
of this Annelid, which proved to be a Sabella, described by 
De Quatrefages as Sabella saxicava, and abounding on certain 
imestone coasts. The species is.a small one, forming a dirty- 
looking leathery tube, about one inch and a half in length. 
Of this, one inch is buried in a perfectly cylindrical and 
straight excavation in the limestone, to the walls of which 
gallery the tube closely fits; the other half inch of tube pro- 
jects freely from the surface of the rock (Pl. XI. fig. 4). 
Having had my attention called to the subject, I remem- 
_bered certain perforated stones and pebbles abundant on the 
south coast of the Isle of Wight, which seemed to me to be 
very possibly the work of an Annelid; and when there, a year 
since, I searched carefully for specimens. Below the Lower 
Greensand cliffs near Luccomb Chine there are but few large 
calcareous boulders on the shore, though there are many of 
indurated sandstones, of varying hardness and colour. Not a 
fragment of the sandstones, though some were very soft, exhi- 
bited a single worm-perforation ; but wherever a boulder con- 
sisting “argely of carbonate of lime lay between tide-marks, it 
was more or less excavated by minute passages; and these in 
many cases were so numerous that it was obvious that the 
author of these “riddlings” must play an important part in 
the destruction and solution of such masses of carbonate of 
Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 4. Vol. i. 18 
