332 REPORT— 1864 



as almost to conceal the whorls. The kindness of Professor Loven in supply- 

 ing- me with, among other tjpes of his species, a specimen of A. (/lohosa has 

 enabled me to institute this comparison ; and I have also been favoured 

 by Professor Lilljeborg with a Norwegian example of the same species. 



With respect to the genus AmpMsjjhyra of Loven, I would take this 

 opportunity of remarking that Messrs. H. and A. Adams, in their well-known 

 ' Genera of Recent MoUusca,' have substituted the name Diaphana, as having 

 been given bj' the late Captain Brown befoi'e the publication of Loven's 

 ' Index MoUuseorum Scandinavite ' ; but on referring to the second and latest 

 edition of Brown'o ' Illustrations of the Eecent Conchology of Great Britain 

 and Ireland,' which bears the date of 1844, it wiU be seen that he cancelled 

 or discarded that name, and placed his Dicqihana Candida (our AmpMsphyra 

 hyalinci) in his new genus Utriculus, along with Cylichna obtusa and a fossil 

 species of Phil'mc. 



There are four British species of Amphisphyra, viz. A. hyalina, A. expansa, 

 and two others. One of these last I noticed and figured in the ' Annals and 

 Magazine of Natural History ' for January 1858, under the name of A. glo- 

 bosa, erroneously supposing it to be Loven's species. The name of the British 

 shell may be changed to ventricosa. The other is undescribed, and was found 

 by Mr. Eobert Dawson in sheU-sand from Haroldswick Bay, in the north of 

 Shetland ; it may be the Bulla denticulata of Adams. 



In the coiu'se of the above mentioned dredging-operations on the coast of 

 Shetland, which were undertaken last year at the instance of the British 

 Association, I obtained two full-grown and living specimens of Stilifer 

 Tvrtonl, adhering to an Echinus Brobachiensis of 0. F. MiiUer, or E. neylectus 

 of Lamarck. The Echinus was also covered with numerous clusters of egg- 

 shaped spawn, which apparently had been deposited by one of the Stilifers. 



I will not say, as is too frequently said on such occasions, that nothing or 

 but little is known on the subject. This is not the case ; but I wiU endeavour 

 to add something to our knowledge of a curious mollusk, which is especially 

 interesting in respect to its peculiar structure and habits, as well as of the 

 diificulty felt by naturalists in assigning to it a correct place in the system of 

 conchology. 



For the discovery of this mollusk science is indebted to the indefatigable 

 labours of the late Dr. Turton. In the ' Zoological Journal,' for October 

 1825, an article by him, entitled " Description of some new British Shells," 

 comprised one which he named Phasianella sfylifera, and of which he 

 says, " We found a dozen of these beautiful little shells aUve, and attached 

 to the spines of the Echinus escidentus, dredged up in Torbay." The reason 

 which he gives for placing it in Phasianella is singular. It is that, in order 

 to prevent the excessive multiplication of genera, he combined with that 

 genus many of the small turbinated shells, such as otherwise answer to 

 Lamarck's character, whether they have an oxjerculum or not ; and such as 

 have the margin of the aperture united all roimd he cast into the new genus 

 Cinr/idus, after Dr. Fleming. 



This last-named author, in his ' History of British Animals,' included in 

 his genus Vclutina Turton's little shell ; but, after showing in what respects 

 it differed from Phasianella, not less than from Velutina, he suggested that 

 it should probably constitute a new genus, Stylina. That name, however, 

 had been pre-engaged twelve years before by Lamarck for a tropical genus 

 of stony Polypes, which he had originally called Fascicularia. Its adoption 

 for the Mollusk also would therefore be contrai'j to usage, especially as the 



