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XXI. Contributions to a Natural History of the Teredidæ. By E. Percevaz WRiGur, 
M.D., A.M., Professor of Zoology, University of Dublin, F.L.S., F.Z.S. 
(Plates LXIV. & LXV.) 
, Read April 5th 1866., 
THE genus Kuphus was established nearly a century ago by Guettard, for the Serpula 
arenaria of Linnæus ; but nothing would appear to have been known about the animal 
forming the shelly tubes until some years later, when Mr. Griffiths favoured Sir 
Joseph Banks with an account of a large number of specimens taken on the shore of the 
low island of Battoo, about twenty leagues distant from the coast of Sumatra, after a 
severe earthquake which occurred there in 1797. These were described * as found stick- 
ing out some 8 or 10 inches from the hard mud, and covered by from one to three fathoms 
of water; one specimen measured 5 feet 4 inches in length, and 9 inches in circum- 
ference at its tail. The animal was not observed, further than that it protruded, from 
the two apertures at the apex of the shell, tentacula resembling small actiniæ. 
Tn the same volume of the Philosophical Transactions there is a paper by Sir Everard 
Home, ** On the Shell of the Sea-worm from the Coast of Sumatra, proving it to belong 
to a species of Teredo.” Sir Joseph Banks believed it to be a Teredo; and this opinion, 
Sir Everard Home says, was confirmed by the discovery of the two recent valves, and the 
two flattened opercula inclosed in one of the specimens. ee 
The entire of the paper, however, is taken up with a description of Teredo navalis 
(PT, norvegica); and although the palettes figured on plate xii. (figs. 4 & 5), are very 
fair representatives of those since ascertained to belong to Kuphus, yet figure 6, of the 
recent shell of the Teredo, might represent almost anything. While the mere removing of 
this animal (or at least of its shelly tube) from the Annelida to the Mollusca was a step 
in- the right direction, still another half-century elapsed before anything more was known 
about its structure or affinities; and for all that we do know of it from that time until the 
present, we are indebted to the researches of one to whom all nat 
Dr. J. E. Gray of the British Museum. i 
From the ne of an apparently perfectly closed specimen of the gm etin 
Dr. Gray was led to believe that the animal of Kuphus was distinguished m. $ er 
Lamellibranchiate Mollusca by the absence of true shelly valves; and in the JAIE EA 
of the Zoological Society’ for 1857, p. 257, he proposed the: genus Furce 
reception, with the following amended characters HE 
FURCELLA, yep mid without any true shelly valves ; siphonal Ws verum 
large, apex dilated, transverse, spathulate, with a central midrib and a gated, 
slender, cylindrical base. : ^ 
Tube clavate, irregular, sometimes bent; apex with two tubular APE a ried 
Separated by a broad hard shelly longitudinal dissepiment ; base pier 
1806, part 1, pp. 269-274, pls. x. and xi. 
uralists owe very much, 
* Philosophical Transactions, 
4H 
VOL, xxv. 
