138 JOURNAL OF CONCrtOLOGY, VOL. lO, NO. 5, JANUARY, 1002. 



Strictly British waters. No new species were added, though there had 

 been an interval of sixteen years from the completion of Jeffreys' work. 

 The list was brought before the Society at its meeting on 4th Feb- 

 ruary, 1886, and was referred to in kind terms from the chair by Mr. 

 W. Denison Roebuck, the President. 



This list is now superseded by the valuable revised list which has 

 been laid on the table to-night, on which a special conuiiittee of the 

 Society has spent so much successful labour, and which includes the 

 species occurring in so much wider an area. I have heartily to con- 

 gratulate the Society on having produced, and on now being the 

 possessor of this truly valuable list. 



The Clyde estuary has long been known as rich ground for the 

 student of the marine mollusca. As the land neighbourhood of the 

 estuary is remarkable for variety of situation suited to the study of 

 entomology, ornithology, and of plant life, so we have in the estuary 

 itself, remarkable variety of sea-bottom, with a relatively extensive 

 coast-line girding its sea-lochs and islands. Lining the sea-board of 

 Ayrshire, which county forms, except for a small upper portion, the 

 eastern flank of the estuary, we have, during a considerable part of its 

 extent, flats of remarkably clean sand between tide-marks and far 

 beyond, while in lower Loch Fyne, throughout the Kintyre eastern 

 coast and in Arran — all of them on the western side of the open firth 

 — we meet with a more or less rocky coast-line with littoral and sub- 

 littoral species peculiar thereto. Intermediate between these eastern 

 and western boundaries and forming the bottom not only of the lower 

 reaches of the estuary, but running up all its lochs and channels, we 

 find, naturally enough perhaps, a bottom of soft dark mud, impalpable 

 in many places, with here and there an admixture of sand and sandy 

 gravel, and more rarely of broken shells. 



The Clyde estuary, physically, is not remarkable for its extensive, 

 varied, and flexuous coast-line alone. Within comparatively easy 

 reach we have at many places water of great depth, furnishing dredg- 

 ing conditions such as might be supposed only to be had many leagues 

 from land, and yet in almost direct communication with the Atlantic. 

 Off" the eastern coast of Arran there are areas where the depth aver- 

 ages sixty fathoms, while to the north of Arran, and in the lower 

 reaches of Loch Fyne water of eighty fathoms and above is met with. 

 Some present are aware that off Skate Id., Lower Loch Fyne, there is 

 a deep hollow where the sounding-line indicates a depth of 107 fathoms. 

 This area is both near and accessible to what is now the centre of 

 marine biological work on the Clyde, viz., the Island of Great Cum- 

 brae. These remarks on our estuary I offer with reserve when I think 

 of the admirable work done by other observers connected with the 

 Scottish Marine Station. 



