The TOWIG HATUBAMST: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History. 



Part 64. APRIL, 1885. Vol. 6. 



A FEW NOTES ON THE NATURAL HISTORY 

 OF THE PEMBROKESHIRE COAST. 



Read before the Lancashire and Cheshire Entomological Society. 

 By CHARLES G. BARRETT. 



FO R the purposes of study, collecting, and excursions, the Pembrokeshire 

 Pield Club found it convenient to adopt a natural rather than an arti- 

 ficial boundary, which was found in a little river — the Taf or Tave — which 

 running for many miles close to the border of the counties of Pembroke and 

 Carmarthen, bends eastward at Laugharne, and so enables the Pembrokeshire 

 naturalists to include in their district an extensive range of sands and sand- 

 hills — -dunes, denes, marrams, or warrens — extending for about five miles to 

 Pendine. These sandhills are not very prolific in insects, but Cicindela 

 maritima has been found upon them and also Agrotis precox. They are 

 rendered much more interesting to the botanist, by the presence in great 

 abundance of the beautiful hearts-ease (Viola Curtisii) ; and early in the 

 summer the swamps contain immense beds of Menyanthes trifoliata. A 

 small variety of Helix pisana is common on the sand hills, but the chief 

 attraction of this piece of coast is in the extraordinary abundance of marine 

 shells to be found on the sands after every favourable tide. The species are 

 not numerous, being all sand-frequenting forms, but the abundance is so 

 great that acres of sand about the highest spring-tide mark are covered with 

 dead valves of Lutraria elliptica, Cardium edule, Buccinum undatum, and 

 Tellina solidula, while the highest point of the last tide is sometimes 

 indicated by a broad band, like a waggon track, ten or twelve feet wide, 

 consisting of these species with Solen marginatus and siliqua, Tkraci 

 papyracea, Cardium echinatum, Tellina tenuis and fabida, Natica moni- 

 lifera, myriads of Ceratisolen legumen and Mactra stultorum, with its 

 variety cinerea, and here and there specimens of Actceon tornatilis, and 

 Lucinopsis undata, or immense worn valves of Cyprina Islandica var. crassior* 

 Here also, but now very rarely, may be found the lovely Scalaria Turlonce, 



