114 PHOLADIDiE. 



States (Bell, Gould, and others); N.W. America, Van- 

 converts Island, and California (P. Carpenter) . 



Captain Bedford informs me that it is eaten by the 

 poor at Oban. Inside the mantle of several specimens 

 Sars found a large parasite, about an inch long, which 

 he believed to be the Malacobdella grossa of Miiller. 

 The shells imbedded in stone are often stunted and 

 much rubbed ; but some which Bouchard-Chantereaux 

 took from the trunk of a tree entangled in a fisherman's 

 net at sea, and others noticed by Mr. Wright from turf 

 at low-water mark, were in a remarkably fine state of 

 preservation, as well as more convex. They seldom 

 exceed on our coasts 3 inches in breadth. Mighels, 

 however, mentions a specimen brought up on the fluke 

 of an anchor in Portland Harbour, U. S., that was 

 4^ inches ; and Grainger found valves in the Belfast 

 deposit of the same size. 



Lister suspected that it might have been the Peloris 

 of the ancients. Was not that the Lithophaga dactylus 

 of modern naturalists ? Petiver gave our shell the name 

 of " Furrow-riVd Pholade-Muscle," and Da Costa 

 that of Pholas bifrons ; Gmelin called it Solen crispus. 

 In the tenth edition of the ' Systema Naturse ' it was 

 placed in the genus My a. 



The hulls of ships returning from South America, off 

 which the copper has been accidentally stripped, and 

 pieces of mahogany drifted to these shores by the Gulf 

 Stream are occasionally drilled by Martesia striata. 

 This is more nearlv allied to Pholadidea than to Pholas, 

 and rej oices in the following synonyms : Pholas lignorum, 

 Eumphius, P. conoides, Parsons, P. nanus, Solander 

 (fide Pulteney) , and P. clavata, Lamarck, besides P. pu- 

 silla, Linne, which is the young state. 



The P. sulcata of Brown, from Dunbar, appears to 



