56 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



bearing on Professor A. Putter's views as to the 

 nutrition of marine animals, was occupied during the 

 Christmas and Easter vacations in finishing his investi- 

 gation on the structure of Buccinum undatum, the large 

 whelk. This work has since appeared as L.M.B.C. 

 Memoir No. XX, illustrated by eight plates, and giving 

 one of the most complete accounts that has yet been 

 published of a Gastropod Mollusc. 



Mr. W. Riddell, M.A., acted as my assistant in the 

 plankton investigation during the Easter vacation. On 

 taking up his new work for the Lancashire and Western 

 Sea-Fisheries Committee he was succeeded as Research 

 Assistant by Mr. Harold G. Jackson, M.Sc. Both these 

 gentlemen rendered good service, and their work will be 

 incorporated in the Sea-Fisheries Report during 1913. 

 Mr. Jackson's further work consisted of a detailed 

 investigation of the structure and habits of the common 

 Hermit-crab, Ewpagurus bernhardus, which it is hoped 

 will be published as an L.M.B.C. Memoir before the end 

 of 1912. 



Mr. Riddell's further work at Port Erin dealt 

 (1) with Polychset worms, in which group he has a new 

 record to announce, viz., Castalia fusca, dredged near 

 the Calf Sound, and not previously found in Manx 

 waters; (2) with the bacterial disease of the spawning 

 plaice which he and Dr. Moore Alexander had found to 

 be a septicaemia due to a bacillus (see Lancashire Sea- 

 Fisheries Laboratory Report for 1911, p. 85). As a 

 result of this discovery we have subjected our fish-ponds 

 to a very thorough process of cleansing and disinfection 

 in the hope of getting rid once for all of the troublesome 

 micro-organism . 



Professor Cole, University College, Reading, 

 writes to me as f ollows : — " Our Port Erin party 



