Abstract
IN NATURE of August 19 (p. 361), which I have only seen to-day, my friend, Mr. J. T. Cunningham, records as a novelty the finding in 1883 of Actinotrocha off Cromarty Firth. Without giving an exhaustive note of its occurrence off our shores since the discovery in 1856 of Phoronis by the late able and accomplished Dr. Strethill Wright, viz. one species fromi Ilfracombe, and another on an oyster-shell from the neighbourhood of Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth, the following remarks may be of interest. So long ago as 1858 the late Dr. Spencer Cobbold found Actinotrocha near Portobello, as was likely after Dr. Wright's discovery, and I have also since met with it in and off the Forth. Moreover, at the meeting of the Microscopical Society at which Dr. Cobbold read his paper, the lamented Dr. Carpenter mentioned that he had found Actinotrocha in abundance off the Island of Arran, probably when working at Tomopteris and other surface-forms with his friend, the enthusiastic E. Claparède, of Geneva. Besides these localities, Prof. Kölliker (“Kurzer Bericht an der westküste von Schottland,” Zeitsch. f. w. Zool., Bd. v. 1864) describes the occurrence of a Phoronis apparently identical with Dr. Wright's P. hippocrepia from Millport on the larger Cumbrae in the Clyde, a region in which the steam-yacht Medusa from Granton has lately been at work. It is probable, indeed, that Phoronis and its larval form (Actinotrocha) are more generally distributed round our shores than the scanty notices of them would lead one to suppose. Old shells in and off the mouth of the Forth, off the western shores, and these and other structures in the littoral region on the southern coast of England, as well as the shores of the Channel Islands, will probably produce many examples of Phoronis, while the careful scrutiny of the contents of the tow-net in similar localities will yield corresponding results as regards Actinotrocha.
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MCINTOSH, W. Actinotrocha of the British Coasts. Nature 34, 468 (1886). https://doi.org/10.1038/034468e0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/034468e0
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