The Zoologist— March, 1874. 3893 



in Calveria the plates, instead of meeting edge to edge and abutting 

 against one another so as to form a continuous rigid shell, the 

 outer portions of the interambulacral plates have spaces between 

 thera, which are filled up with membranes; and the inner margins 

 of the plates form wide expansions which overlap. When, there- 

 fore, the enclosed animal, by a kind of rhythmical contraction and 

 expansion, causes this overlapping of the plates, it would seem to 

 pant, a proceeding sufficiently at variance with the ordinary course 

 of nature to excite the nervous feelings of the boldest naturalist. 

 It is an evidence of the author's good taste and good feeling that 

 he has named this unexpected novelty after Captain Calver, thus 

 dedicating this "wonder of the deep" to a commander whose name 

 should ever be associated with an expedition to the success of 

 which his knowledge, skill and unvarying courtesy so eminently 

 contributed. 



Two other genera of urchins, Phormosoraa and Echinotheria, 

 possess this seemingly anomalous structure, but neither of them 

 has the external figure of an ordinary urchin so exactly as 

 Calveria. 



I must now take up ray story at another point, and then bring it 

 to a conclusion, for it is impossible to accompany these vessels 

 through five hundred and thirty pages of sounding, dredging and 

 discovery, or my review would be extended to a length quite pro- 

 hibiting its insertion in the 'Zoologist.' The 'Porcupine' now 

 steered southward on another cruise and at another date. On the 

 20th of July she dredged all day off the coast of Portugal at depths 

 varying from 380 to 1000 fathoms; the results at 994 fathoms 

 were so extraordinary as to excite the utmost astonishment of the 

 dredgers, and are thus described : — 



" It being late in the evening, the contents of the dredge could not be 

 sifted and examined until daylight next morning. We then saw a mar- 

 vellous assemblage of shells, mostly dead, but comprising certain species 

 which we had always considered exclusively northern, and others which 

 Mr. Jeffreys recognized as Sicilian tertiary fossils ; while nearly forty per 

 cent, of the entire number of species were undescribed, and some of them 

 represented new genera. The following is an analysis of the Mollusca, per- 

 fect or fragmentary, taken at one haul : — Brachyopoda, 1 ; eoucbifera, 50 ; 

 Solenoconchia, 7 ; Gasteropoda, 113 ; Heteropoda, 1 ; and Pteropoda, 14 ; 

 186 species in all. Of these 91 were recognized as recent, 24 as fossil, and 

 71 were undescribed. * --;= =;< This remarkable collection, of which not 

 SECOND SERIES — VOL. IX. N 



