470 



FISHERY BULLETIN OF THE FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE 



West, enumerating 123 species. In more recent 

 years several papers have been published dealing 

 with the mollusks of Sanibel Island, near the 

 mouth of the Caloosahatchee River, in Lee 

 County; Clench (1923, 1925) listed 89 species, 

 while Haas (1940) gave ecological notes on many 

 of the species found here. In the last few decades 

 some collecting has been done along the north- 

 western coast (Lyman 1942; Schwengel and 

 McGinty 1942). The most complete work on the 

 mollusks of western Florida is that by Louise 

 Perry, Marine Shells of the Southwest Coast of 

 Florida, 1940, in which she describes 346 species 

 most of which are illustrated. 



ALABAMA-LOUISIANA 



The published records for this area are 

 fewer than for the Gulf coast of Florida or for 

 Texas. The first faimal list I have been able to 

 find is that by Vanatta (1904) who published a 

 list of mollusks from Horn Island, Mississippi. 

 Cary (1906) enumerated 73 species from various 

 places along the Louisiana coast from Cameron 

 in the western part to the Chandeleur Islands in 

 the east. Whereas in Cary's list the proportion of 

 gastropods to pelecypods is 32 to 38, in the Horn 

 Island list the proportion is 3 to 32. This seems 

 to suggest that the shells of Horn Island were 

 gathered almost exclusively along the outer 

 beach and that further search on the lagoon side 

 of the island would bring to light further species. 

 In 1929, Clench listed 23 species from various 

 localities in southern Louisiana in the Missis- 

 sippi Delta region. Burkenroad (1933) enu- 

 merated 9 species of pteropods from the waters of 

 Louisiana. The most recent list of Louisiana shells 

 (Harry 1942) gives 93 species from the vicinity of 

 Grand Isle and Barataria Bay. This report, the 

 result of 12 years collecting by members of the 

 staff of the Louisiana State L^niversity Marine 

 Laboratory staff there, shows how impoverished 

 the fauna is in this part of the Gulf in comparison 

 with that of the regions farther south on both 

 sides of the Gulf. 



TEXAS 



The first enumeration of the mollusks of this 

 part of the Gulf, and indeed of any part of the 

 area covered by this report, was that publislicd 

 by Ferdinand Koemer in his work on 'I'cxas 

 (Roemer 1849). Out of 54 species lie listed from 

 the i.sland of (Jalveston 7 were new s[)ccies de- 



scribed by R. A. Philippi. Singley (1893) gave 

 an extensive list of the marine mollusks of the 

 Texas coast, listing 342 species. This contribu- 

 tion, being based in part on Ball's (1889) cata- 

 logue, contained many species for which no records 

 from the waters of Texas proper are known. 

 Mitchell (1894) published, privately, a list of 

 Texas marine shells enumerating 81 species. The 

 list was based on his own collecting and dealt 

 mainly with the mollusks of the Matagorda- 

 Corpus Christi Bay area. Strecker's (1935) list 

 of Texas marine shells appeared posthumously; it 

 contained 188 species, a number of which were 

 not in Singley's list. As an appendix Strecker gave 

 a list of 176 species said by Dall to come from the 

 Texas district but for which Strecker had no spe- 

 cific localities. Stenzel (1940) published a list of 

 56 species from Point Isabel, Texas. A consider- 

 able amount of ecological work is being carried on 

 at the present time by workers at the Institute of 

 Marine Science at Aransas Pass (Hedgpeth, 1950; 

 Whitten et al., 1950) as well as at the laboratory 

 of the Texas Game, and Fish Commission at 

 Rocki)ort. Recently, Pulley (1949 and 1952) pub- 

 lished on the mollusks of the Texas coast. His 

 1952 paper is a comprehensive one, in which he 

 has included, witli appropriate comments, those 

 species previously recorded from Texas, l)ut not 

 known to occur lliere. 



MEXICO 



Only a few papers have been published on the 

 mollusks of the east coast of Mexico. Baker 

 (1891) listed 216 species from Veracruz, .Silam, 

 Progi-eso, and Campeche (tiie last three localities 

 are on tlie peninsula of Yucatan), and Hinkley 

 (1907) enumerated 47 marine shells from the 

 vicinity of Tampico. 



CUBA 



The older works on Cuban shells, such as those 

 by d'Orl)igny and Arango, gave no specific local- 

 ities for the marine mollusks. In the Catalogo de 

 los Moluscos de Cuba, Aguayo and Jaume (1947- 

 52) published some records from the northwest 

 coast of Cuba. Henderson's (1916) book con- 

 tains, also, a good picture of the northwestern 

 coast of Cuba, although he gives no list of mol- 

 lusks, Liltlc collecting seems to have been carried 

 out along the part of llic ('ni)an coast belween 

 Habnna ami ("abo San .Vnionio, a region that 

 should be vers rich in mollusks. 



