GLYCERA VESICULOSA.

Fig. i. Head and anterior segments, with oesophagus extended.

Fig. ii. The 201st foot, seen from behind.

Fig. iii. The 26th foot, on the left side, seen in profile.

Fig. iv. The 200th foot, seen in front, and showing the position of the vesicle.

Fig. v. Articulated bristles, from the superior and inferior bundles.

All enlarged.

THE ANNELIDS OF DEVON,

WITH A RESUMÉ OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE COUNTY.

BY EDWARD PARFITT.

THE natural history of Devon has had many writers scattered over a considerable period of time, but up to the present we have no work embracing both departments of the vegetable and animal kingdoms,—a work that would show at once what these departments contained, so that it should be useful to the generaliser, and showing the geographical and altitudinal range of the more prominent forms, with, as far as it is possible to ascertain, their respective relationship to the geological formations of the county.

To take a retrospective view of what has been done by former writers from time to time, and compile and verify the animals and plants described and enumerated by them, and adding and completing, as far as it is possible to do, up to the present time, is the work I have set myself to do.

Polwhele, in 1797, published all that was known of the botany of the county, and, in 1829, Messrs. Kingston and Jones published the Flora Devoniensis, in which an attempt is made towards the elucidation of the geographical and altitudinal range of certain species; and, in 1826, Carrington, in his description of Dartmoor, has given us several lists of the plants and animals inhabiting that region. Mr. Gosse has contributed to our knowledge of some of the marine life found inhabiting the nooks and corners of our coast, both in his "Rambles on the Devonshire Coast," and in his more beautiful book, The Actinologia Britannica.

But from 1829, when the Flora was published, to 1860, when the Rev. T. F. Ravenshaw published a catalogue of the flowering plants and ferns, nothing appears to have been done towards a thorough knowledge of the flora of the county, except a few occasional notes in one or more of the periodicals devoted to this branch of knowledge.

Dr. Cullen, in 1849, published a Flora Sidostiensis, and last year Mr. I. W. N. Keys began to publish, through the

Devon and Cornwall Natural History Society, a Catalogue Flora of the two counties.

But what we have most to do with on the present occasion, and to which I would invite your attention, is to a section of the animal kingdom, namely, the Annelids, or Worms; but we will first take a slight retrospective view of what has been done towards working out the Fauna or Animals of Devon, in addition to those mentioned above by Mr. Gosse. Col. Montagu, in some of the early volumes of the Linnean Society, published descriptions and figures of many rare and remarkable animals discovered by himself on our south coast, and he continued, with more or less interruption, to publish up to the time of his death, which occurred in 1815. Previous to his decease, he had prepared a work on the Annelids of the United Kingdom, which, since his death, has not seen the light until it was kindly lent to me by H. D'Orville, Esq., but the arrangement and nomenclature was such as could not be adopted at the present time.

Bellamy's Natural History of South Devon, published in 1839, is too discursive, and at the same time too limited, to be of any particular use; and Turton and Kingston's Natural History of the District includes a better catalogue of the animals; this is also very imperfect. The list of birds published in Loudon's Magazine of Natural History, by Dr. Moore, of Plymouth, is very good, and, I believe, was as perfect as could be made up to the time it was published. Since then Mr. Brooking Rowe has published, in the Devon and Cornwall Natural History Society's Reports, lists of the birds, reptiles, and mammalia; and Mr. Reading has published, through the same channel, a part of the Lepidoptera of the two counties.

The Annelids, as a class, are animals of very obscure habits, living principally under stones, in mud, or, as the common earth worm and its congeners, in garden and other soil. Their forms and appearances are, generally speaking, not very attractive, except to the enthusiastic naturalist, who is determined on investigating the various forms of life.

Although many of the animals included in this division of the animal kingdom are not attractive in their appearance, there is one division into which they are divided which cannot fail to elicit admiration from the most casual observer. The Terebellido, when seen alive in a glass of sea water, are some of the most elegant creatures inhabiting the great deep. Their beautiful plumose branchia, coloured of various hues, with bars and spots, some of them reminding one of the

ocelli in the peacock's tail, or the Himalayan pheasants; others, again, with their breathing apparatus of the most vivid colours hanging down their backs.

The marine species range through a zone reaching from near high-water mark, where the shore is rocky, and particularly where the shore is strewed with rocks, to forty or fifty fathoms; but the largest number of individuals and species are found, so far as my experience goes, between low-water mark and two or three fathoms. This is the zone of the generality of tube makers.

The Annelids have various modes of living. Some construct themselves tubes, in which they live, either made of calcareous matter, or of grains of sand, some of which are very compact, and others are mere "ropes of sand." Again, some species attach their tubes to old shells and stones, and others live with their tubes stuck vertically in the sand; some have roving and solitary habits, such as Pectinaria Belgica, and others are gregarious, such as Sabellaria Anglica, which construct those large honeycombe-like masses on our sandstone rocks between tide marks. A few species are pelagic, and swim with great activity. One of these pelagic forms, and I believe the commonest inhabiting our shores, is Nereis pelagica; I have met with it high up in our estuaries, where the water is only just brackish, and where in heavy rains it must be inundated with fresh water; and some specimens of this species I have met with in muddy places that could only be reached by spring-tides, showing at once the hardiness and tenacity and the apparent vicissitudes to which this species is subjected.

In the fresh water species Devonshire is well represented, and in certain places some of the Planariadæ literally swarm on the muddy bottoms of ponds and ditches, they being most abundant in still or slightly running water.

Amongst the fresh water species we have some curious creatures; they cannot boast of much beauty so far as colour is concerned, but their forms and modes of life are remarkable. Thus, in Glossiphonia, with its peculiar habit of carrying about its young attached to its abdomen, after the manner of the Marsupials of the antipodes; and it almost seems to shadow back through the long vista of time the connecting link of the Marsupials of the two hemispheres. Although this little animal is not strictly speaking a Marsupial, yet its manner of carrying about its young, until they are able to take care of themselves, is precisely that peculiar protecting instinct that we only give credit to the higher animals; but