358 KEW : SHELLS OF THE LINCOLNSHIRE COAST. 



points of view, but to a naturalist they have their own peculiar 

 charms, as all who are familiar with Mr. Cordeaux's writings will admit. 

 Mr. Dodd has paid much attention to the drift debris of the coast, of 

 which he has taken away and carefully examined large quantities, and 

 some of which he sent to Mr. Marshall ; many of the small species 

 enumerated below have in this way been obtained. Mr. Dodd has 

 obligingly communicated the following notes respecting the drift, 

 which is generally blackish in colour from fragments of coal, of which 

 it is largely composed. It contains large quantities of Sertularidse, 

 etc., together with sandy cases of annelides, young Echinus, various 

 fossil fragments and other rejectamenta, including, of course, a few 

 land and freshwater shells and aquatic insects washed down the 

 marsh ' drains,' and it is intermingled with fragments of wood from 

 the outcrop of the subterranean peat-bed, or so-called submerged 

 forest ; valves of Pholas, Mya, Mylilus, Cardium, Mactra, and Solen 

 are conspicuous ; and some molluscs, such, for instance, as the 

 Cardiums, young of Mya truncata, Scrobicularia alba, Venus gallina, 

 and occasionally Saxicava rugosa, are found among the debris in a 

 living state. Tidal currents, rough seas, and change of wind cause 

 alterations in the position of the drift ; sometimes it is much spread 

 and scattered, while at other times it becomes accumulated in large 

 quantities over confined areas. 



Of exotic shells, Venus mercenaria appears to have long been 

 known in the Humber (Science Gossip, 1889, pp. 114-5) ; Crepidula 

 fornicata comes with American oysters, which are deposited in the 

 same estuary, and is found by Mr. Smith commonly on the Grimsby 

 beach (Naturalist, 1888, p. 275); a specimen of Nassa cornicula has 

 been found at Chapel by Mr. Dodd, by whom it is regarded as a 

 ballast-shell, for wooden vessels are sometimes purchased at Hull 

 and elsewhere, brought down the coast, stranded, and broken up 

 during the winter. The species or form of Trochus, T. conulus, was 

 stated by Mr. Bean to have been taken by his son, in a living state, 

 attached to a sounding-lead, off the Lincolnshire coast, during his 

 voyage in a collier from Newcastle to London ; but, as Mr. Jeffreys 

 states (British Conchology, iii. 332), the discoverer had then recently 

 been in the Mediterranean, on the shores of which Trochus conulus 

 is common. 



A minute brachiopod found by Mr. Dodd in the drift, both at 

 Skegness and Sutton, after having been submitted to Mr. Edgar 

 Smith, the Rev. Merle Norman, and the Rev. Boog Watson, was 

 described and figured as new to science, under the name of 

 Terebratula papulosa Marsh., at pp. 186-190 of the fifth volume of the 

 Journal of Conchology ; subsequently, however, on the discovery^" 



Naturalist 



