316 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



strated with a pin, was in most cases sufficiently strong to enable 

 the observer to raise the animal to the surface, but not out of the 

 water.* 



CyPR^ElDiE. 



Our little Cowry (Cyprcea europcea) makes considerable use of 

 a thread, a fact first noticed by Charles Kingsley, who wrote to 

 Gosse, in 1854, that he had seen the animal suspend itself from 

 the under side of low-tide rocks by a glutinous thread an inch and 

 more in length ; in captivity, further, he saw it " float on the 

 surface by means of a similar thread attached to a glutinous 

 bubble." f According to a paper by Mr. L. St. G. Byne, the 

 animal is occasionally seen at Teignmouth, hanging by its 

 " byssus " on the rocks at low tide.t This statement, as the 

 writer learns from Mr. Byne, is made on the authority of a 

 reliable collector, who mentions, amongst other things, that on 

 lifting a boulder he saw one of these molluscs hang from it by a 

 thread 4-5 in. long. Mr. Hornell, from observations made pre- 

 sumably at Jersey, writes in an interesting manner on the same 

 subject. In confinement in a tank, he says, the little animal 

 frequently crawls foot-uppermost along the surface of the water, 

 and occasionally may be seen to form a little disc of mucus, from 

 which it lowers itself gently by a mucous thread till it hangs in 

 mid-water, dangling in the fashion of a Spider at the end of its 

 silken cord. " This habit of the Cowry is to be correlated," 

 Mr. Hornell adds, " to that more familiar and natural one so 

 readily verified by any observer who visits the low-tide caves and 

 gullies where, amongst Sponges and Ascidians, this animal loves 

 so to live. Here, when the tide recedes, Cowries more or less 

 enveloped in their bright-coloured mantle robes are often seen 

 passively hanging suspended from the gully's roof, or from points 

 and jutting ledges, by a stout mucous thread." § 



Cerithiid^. 

 In this family we have notes on a Bittium, a Cerithiopsis, and 



* Boycott, " Valvata piscinalis as a Spinner," ' Science Gossip' (n.s.), 

 ii. (1895), p. 82. 



f 'Charles Kingsley; his Letters and Memories of his Life,' edited by 

 his Wife, ed. 3, i. (1877), p. 408. 



I Byne, 'Journal of Conchology,' vii. (1893), p. 187. 



§ Hornell, 'Journal of Marine Zoology,' ii. (1896), pp. 59-61. 



