BTTBLIN NATTTRAL HISTOEY SOCIETY. 103 



met the species at Clonea, county of Waterford, in 1849, and conununi- 

 cated it to your Society on the 15th April, 1851, The full notice of his 

 discovery will be found in the first volume of your Proceedings, p. 141 ; 

 and a subsequent account in the Natural History Eeview, vol. xi., p. 

 71. I regret to be obliged to dissent altogether from him in the con- 

 clusion that the animal is a stone-borer. I got specimens in holes in- 

 closed between old valves of Venerupis irus and Tapes pullastra (var. 

 Perforans), which ought to be, I think, decisive in the matter ; and as 

 to the fact of the animal exactly filling the pear-shaped cavity, and the 

 difficulty of removing it through the aperture of the burrows, any one 

 who considers the nature of the animal — "soft-bodied, and irregularly 

 distended with fluid" — will easily understand the true value of the first 

 of these objections ; and any one taking into account the softness of the 

 animal, and the fact that its surface is covered with prehensile projec- 

 tions, will easily understand, and give its due value, to the second. As 

 to the sinuosities of the burrows I cannot pretend to speak. I met 

 none that any well-ordered bivalve might not surmount ; at the same 

 time, I do not mean to say that the animal may not be occasionally a 

 stone-borer; but certainly at Ballyvaughan it was no more a stone- 

 borer than the other Holothuriadse found along with it, or the very 

 pebbles which get accidentally entangled in the mollusc holes. The 

 animal occurs literally in hundreds at this station, of every size, in 

 the rocks overhung with sea- weeds, and in company with Pholas, Tapes, 

 and Venerupis. Almost every stone broken, if containing the one, con- 

 tained the other, in company with three other echinoderms, one of which 

 I have little hesitation in pronouncing to be Syrinx granulosus of "W. 

 Thompson. This was extremely common — in fact, the commonest of 

 the stone- dwellers. This species is of peculiar interest, having been 

 first detected by W. H. Harvey, living under stones, at Miltown-Malbay, 

 a situation in which I likewise found it at Lahinch. The second is Syrinx 

 Harveii, which has not been, I believe, hitherto recorded as Irish. The 

 third is Syrinx papillosus. Under the stones, at Lahinch, I met Cucumaria 

 pentactes, by no means uncommon, along with two of the species already 

 mentioned as occurring at Ballyvaughan, viz. Syrinx Harveii and S. 

 granulosus. I also met a third species, which approaches very closely 

 to, if it be not identical with, Dr. Parran's Thyone Andrewsii ; but I 

 must defer till some future session certainty in the matter. Of the mol- 

 luses I will not speak further than to remark, that southern types are well 

 marked. I pass them and the other departments by with the less com- 

 punction, because I hope next session to return more fully to the subject. 

 I think the investigations held, however, show that the predominant 

 western forms are those which occur also on the north-east and south, 

 as contrasted with the narrowed eastern district, of which Dublin may 

 be looked on as the centre. 



Specimens of the various specimens were exhibited, and a fine spe- 

 cimen of Campanularia calyculata. 



