48 THE NAUTILUS. 



the courtesy of Mr. Preston and the great kindness of M. Philippe 

 Dautzenberg of Paris, who had purchased the types of these genera, 

 I have been able to examine them under the compound microscope 

 and determine their hinge characters. These very minute bivalves 

 are exceedingly difficult objects of study, and unless one is familiar 

 with the type of hinge possessed by them it is very difficult to deter- 

 termine their true characters. 



I find Davisia to possess exactly the type of hinge figured by Ber- 

 nard for " Erycina " veneris Mun. Chalmas and Velain, in Bull. 

 Mus. d'hist. Nat. de Paris, 1898, p. 81, fig. 3. This is not an Erycina 

 in the proper sense, as Bernard points out, but is very closely related 

 to Kellia as typified by K. suborbicularis. If examination of other 

 species should show that the small differences which exist are con- 

 stant, the group might rank as a section of Kellia. 



Malvinasia on the other hand is based on a normal species of 

 Rochefortia (see Bernard, op. cit., p. 82, fig. 4). 



I may in this connection recall that another supposed new genus of 

 Leptonacea, Diplodontina Stempell, 1899, from Chile, has the hinge 

 of Kellia and is probably a member of the latter genus. 



NOTES. 



SHALL WE BE ORDERED OFF THE BEACHES ? There already 

 exists a trust or combination which controls the trade in food fishes. 

 and I suspect that there are those who would like to extend the same 

 system to the mollusks. At least I have just seen a book called 

 " Shell-fish Industries," by Prof. James L. Kellogg, which, mingling 

 data about edible mollusks with some ordinary politicians' talk or 

 " buncombe " about the superiority of American to European insti- 

 tutions and the like, appears to be put out to promote the passing of 

 laws which would facilitate the monopolization of our mollusks. It 

 recommends handing over our beaches and mud-flats to private land- 

 lords or sealords. Most shell collectors have been annoyed by 

 attempts to exclude them, by means sometimes legal sometimes 

 illegal and fraudulent, from access to sea, rivers or lakes, and will 

 not be pleased to find a professed naturalist working to deprive them 

 of any right to collect marine mollusks except in deep water with a 

 dredge. For example, while collecting at Nahant, Massachusetts, 

 between tides, I have been told to get out by a minion of an adja- 

 cent landowner, notwithstanding that I had a legal right to be there, 

 although I would no longer have it under the laws proposed by this 

 book JOHN A. ALLEN. 



