i beh NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 
Kerry, about 140 miles from land, and rises in its shallowest part to 
within 190 fathoms of the surface of the Atlantic.* Possibly the spe- 
cimen did not actually live where it was taken, since it may have settled 
down from a much higher part of the slope. Considering, however, 
that Professor Thorell has got living objects, among which is a shell, 
from a deeper sea-bed (1400 fathoms) in the Arctic Ocean, there is con- 
siderable probability that the species is from a truly abyssal habitat. 
Doubtless it will be suspected that the specimen is a waif, brought 
from some distant locality, and accidentally deposited on the bottom 
that yielded it—a suspicion just as likely to be correct as the notion that 
there are no other species of shells living in the deep portions of the 
Atlantic than those known to inhabit the shallower sea-beds around our 
coasts. 
There is another view which may be held with more show of reason 
—the specimen may belong to a species not existing at present in the 
Atlantic, but which may have lived in it during, perhaps, the latest 
of the Tertiary periods, like the ‘‘ sub-fossils,’’ Rhynchonella psittacea, 
Astarte crebricostata, A. borealis, Mya Uddevallensis, &c., got by myself 
some years ago from the German Ocean, off the coast of Northumber- 
land ;+ but it is so fresh in every respect, that I am strongly disinclined 
to accept such a view. 
Unfortunately, the specimen, which I have endeavoured to represent 
in Figs. 1 and 2, is slightly broken at the anterior margin, but sufficient 
remains to enable me to give a description of it—ample enough, per- 
haps, to serve in the absence of a specific diagnosis. 
Fig. 3. 
Fig. 2. 
Upper Valve.—Corneous, brown, thin; rather prominently conical ; 
marginal outline approximately circular ; sides scarcely convex ; 24 six- 
teenths in diameter, and 1 sixteenth in height ;+ apex subcentral, and on 
the posterior half; outersurface, as seen with a good pocket lens, crowded 
with fine, regular, sub-parallel, concentric raised lines; inner surface 
showing, under a high magnifying power, a delicate, scaly, or imbri- 
cated appearance; anterior portion of a yellowish-white colour; mus- 
cular impressions tolerably well marked. 
* A valuable chart of the ‘‘ Soundings of the West of Ireland” accompanies Hoskyn’s 
‘‘ Report” on the same, published in the ‘Nautical Magazine,” October, 1862. This 
chart ought to be consulted by those who are interested in the subject-matter of the present 
aper. 
: i See “ Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.,”’ vol. xviii., pp. 235, 238. In the paper referred 
to the Rhynchonella is erroneously considered to have belonged to a recent individual. 
After it was published I determined the Astartes named in the text. 
{ Fig. 3 represents the natural width of the specimen. 
