THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 

 No. 4. APEIL 1868. 



XXIX. — On Lithodomous Annelids. By E. Ray LankeSTEE, 

 Junior Student of Christ Church, Oxford. 



[Plate XI.] 



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 

 limestone 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 sm-face of the rock (PI, 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 largely 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 j)art in 

 the destruction and solution of such masses of carbonate of 



Ann. & Mag. N. Hist. Ser,4. Vol.\. 18 



