Mr. W. Thompson's Additions to the Fauna of Ireland. 383 not without some practical foundation. I was, however, at the same time convinced that the observations from which it had been inferred that the animal always causes death by the abs-traction of blood, must have been very superficially made. I have been assured by persons well-versed in such matters, that even the rabbit is frequently destroyed by a wound in the neck ; and I recollect well, when a schoolboy, of having had a young rabbit destroyed by a weasel, and of the astonishment I felt at seeing upon it, when dead, no mark of injury of any kind, but the mysterious bloody patch and small wound on the side of the neck, described above. The truth seems to be, that whenever the Ferret attacks an animal which it is capable of mastering by main force, it despatches him, not by blood-sucking, but by the most speedy and merciful of all modes of inflicting death — piercing the upper part of the spinal marrow ; but that when it is opposed to animals of large size and strength superior to its own, it alters its mode of warfare, seizing them where opportunity offers, and clinging to them till they expire from loss of blood, pain, and exhaustion of strength. XLIII. — Additions to the Fauna of Ireland, including a few species unrecorded in that of Britain ; — with the description of an ap-parently new Glossiphonia. By William Thompson, Pres. Nat. Hist, and Philos. Society of Belfast. [Continued from p. 315*.] MOLLUSCA. Nassa varicosa, Turt. (sp.). Tritonia varicosa, Turt. Zool. Jour, vol. ii. p. 365. pi. 13. fig. 7. A dead specimen was dredged (depth twelve to fifteen fathoms) off the south entrance to Bantry Bay in May 1846 by Mr. MacAndrew. Pleurotoma teres, Forb. Ann. Nat. Hist. vol. xiv. p. 412. pi. 2. fig-3. One dead specimen was dredged from aboutfourteen fathoms inBir-terbuy Bay, county of Galway, in the summer of 1845 by Mr. Barlee. This gentleman — when accompanied by Mr. Jeffreys — obtained in the same bay very fine specimens of the rare Pleurotoma Boothii, Smith (sp.) — Fusus Boothii, Wern. Mem. vol. viii. p. 98. pi. 1. f. 1. * As the marks of doubt placed after Bonaparte's Sandpiper and the Sword-fish, in the first part of this communication (p. 311, 314) might con-vey the erroneous impression that there is uncertainty respecting the spe-cies, it seems to me desirable to state, that there is no doubt on that subject* Those marks should rather have been placed before the name as expressive of uncertainty about the admission of the species into the Irish Fauna.
XLIII.—Additions of the fauna of Ireland, including a few species unrecorded in that of Britain;—with the description of an apparently new Glossiphonia
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