8 APLYSIID.f:. 



animal being in a very sickly state. Mr. Cooper in- 

 forms me that he knows of several specimens which 

 have been found at Guernsey during the last two years. 

 There is a shell of this species in the British ^luseum, 

 presented by Mr. Gosse^ with a memorandum that it 

 was from an Aplysia, about 8 inches long, taken at 

 Torquay. A. depilans is common on the Atlantic coast 

 of France from Morbihan southwards, and throughout 

 the Mediterranean and Adriatic. I met with great 

 numbers of it at a low tide near Rochelle in 1830. Mr. 

 Jabez Hogg, in a valuable and beautifully illustrated 

 paper on the lingual membrane of Mollusca (Trans. 

 Hoy. Micr. Soc. xvi.), has shown the diflPerence be- 

 tween the dentition of this and the last species. A. 

 punctata has 70 rows of divergent teeth, the median and 

 laterals being conical and unicuspid; in A. depilans 

 there are but 40 rows, and the teeth are broad and tri- 

 cuspid ; the laterals in each are numerous and similar. 



It does not appear that Linne knew this species^ ex- 

 cept from the accounts of older writers. The first 

 authority cited by him is Rondelet, Avho described his 

 Lepus marinus from the coast of Languedoc. The Ler- 

 ncsa of Bohadscli, from Naples, is evidently the same 

 kind. The specific name depilans was derived from the 

 celebrated treatise of Dioscorides on the materia medica, 

 in whicb he says (lib. ii. c. 20) that the Xaycoo^ daXdacrto';, 

 when either pounded by itself or smeared with an a/caXu^r; 

 (Medusa), removes hairs. It is the Dolabella lepus of 

 Risso, A. lej)orina of Delle Chiaje, and A. Petersoni of 

 Grav. 



