and Forbes adds the dead-nettle, the avens, the toad-flax, the cross-leaved bedstraw, and a few other plants; but, considering the small extent of the ground, this is not remarkable. One of the bedstraws (Galium verum) is so profuse that the air in July is filled with its perfume.[1] To the relations of the Manx Flora and Fauna we shall again advert hereafter. There is, perhaps, greater affinity of the Flora to that of the nearest Scotch or English lands than to that of North Wiles; thus, one of the few sub-alpine plants assigned to the island, Saxifraga aizoides, is rather an English than a Welsh plant.
Contrary to what we have observed as regards the island flora generally, few spots are more productive in marine productions of the animal kingdom, and the Manx mollusca were especially studied by Forbes, and that as found at different depths, or in what he termed bathymetrical zones—liitoral, laminarian, coralline, infra-medial, and abyssic. The last he had little opportunity of examining, and erroneously concluded that life soon ceased in it, Forbes considered that the Irish Sea is a kind of neutral ground, zoologically speaking, and his own island is somewhat curiously situated in the centre of if; but there are fewer of his Lusitanian species of mollusca than of plants, many Atlantic or western species, and a few of a south-British character; the generality may be said to be rather Celtic especially than European, with a small per-centage of boreal species. Forbes also paid great attention to the animals themselves in contradistinction to their shells. and in his later works to their geological distribution, In 1838 he published his "Malacologia Monensis," and in 1853 the "British Mollusca," in conjunction with Mr. Hanley. In the Malacologia he teaches that "a species is defined, unalterable, original, approaching but never uniting. Varieties are forms depending on local or accidental causes, diverging from the normal type, but often, and with facility, returning to it." Would he have spoken so decidedly in these days?
In Douglas market may often be seen at least a score of different kinds of fish, so bountiful are our seas to the island, set as it were in their centre. Forbes dredged off Ballaugh, where, however, at the present time, there are fewer facilities for doing so than at Ramsey. The Ballaugh scallop-bed is about four miles out, in twenty or thirty fathoms, and with deeper water on each side; similar reefs occur off Maughold Head and Laxey, and these may he easily dredged by the aid of the Ramsey boatmen. The bottom off Douglas is different, being coralline, with beds of Pectunenli. Port Ertu is a good locality for the Naturalist, the fishing lines and lobster pots bringing up many interesting specimens.
Of land and fresh-water shells, Helix aspersa abounds in the island, H. lapicida seems scarce. Limax gagates was found near Peel by Forbes, bot he did not detect the minute Achatina. Many of the larger Lininzel, as well as Anodon, Patludina, and Cyclostoma are absent, as they are mostly from Ireland and the North of Britain, but rather at home in the south, seeming as if they had invaded England.
- ↑ Forbes perceived the specific value of the variations in British Polygalæ, and the very different forms which Euphrasin takes in some situations.
