Notes and Letters on the Natural History of Norfolk

Note 91 — NOTES ON CERTAIN FISHES AND MARINE ANIMALS FOUND IN NORFOLK.

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It is difficult to determine the species of marine Annelids referred to by Browne; the Sea Leech is probably Pontobdella lævis. The "large wormes" digged for bait, mentioned more than once, are Lug-worms, Arenicola piscatorum; the Vermes in tubulis testacei may be tube-worms of the genus Terrebella, or a species of Serpula. Tethya or "Sea dugge" (not "Sea dogs," as Wilkin has it) might very well apply to Ascidia or one of the allied genera. Simple Ascidians, generally known as Sea-squirts, are common littoral forms; the animals figured by Rondeletius under the heading "De Tethyis" (p. 127) are simple Ascidians. The vesicaria marina, or "fanago," might well refer to the egg capsules of the common Whelk (Buccinum undatum), which are very commonly found in masses on the shore. In his sixth letter to Merrett, Browne mentions two kinds of "fanago," the first which I take to be the egg capsules of the Whelk, resembling the "husk of peas;" the smaller that of "barley when the flower [awn?] is mouldered away," may possibly be the egg capsules of Purpura lapillus, or of some species of Natica, which bear a fanciful resemblance to grains of barley. See also Merrett's second letter in Appendix A., in which he describes the Vesicaria found on oyster-shells as resembling flowers of Hyacinthus botryoides, which is not a bad description of the form of the egg capsules of P. lapillus.

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