308 BULLETIN OF THE 



1882), the earliest name for it is that of Mighels, who not unnaturally de- 

 scribed it as a Turritella. 



The history of the name borealis for this species is somewhat curious. In 

 1835 Sir Charles Lyell figured this species in a paper on " The Rising of 

 Sweden," (Phil. Trans., 1835, pi. ii. figs. 11, 12,) but applied no specific name 

 to it, and referred to it as " ? Scalaria." It seems that Dr. Beck, who was in 

 correspondence with Sir Charles at the time, in regard to the stratigraphical 

 classification of the later tertiaries, must have applied a manuscript name to this 

 figure, though there i6 no published evidence of this until long afterward. In 

 the proceedings of the Geological Society of London (Vol. III. p. 120), Lyell 

 mentions, among other shells identified for him by Dr. Beck, from the St. Law- 

 rence tertiaries near Quebec, Scalaria borealis and Erycina labradorica. No 

 author is mentioned foT either, nor is there any reference to a description oi 

 figure, even to Lyell's figure above cited. Upon these circumstances is founded 

 the claim of Beck to be considered the first describer of the species, which has 

 also Been assigned by Bronn (Index Pal., III. p. 1114, 1848) and others to 

 Lyell. All this gave no one any claim to the name as established. In fact, 

 Beck never described or figured the species, and the only means by which his 

 name became connected with it is by the citation of his manuscript name by 

 Lyell, in a paper on Captain Bayfield's fossils from the Gulf and River of St. 

 Lawrence (Geol. Trans., 2d ser., VI. p. 136), and a suggestion of its identity 

 with the figure referred to, as published in the Philosophical Transactions. 

 The part of the Transactions containing the reference was published in the 

 winter of 1841-42, the exact date being inaccessible, but the matter is of little 

 importance. The only description of the species published (with the exception 

 about to be noted) until many years afterward, so far as I have been able to 

 find out, was that of Dr. Mighels, which should therefore take precedence. 



In 1842, Moller, working at the Copenhagen Museum in cooperation with 

 Beck, a number of whose MS. species he published in his Index to the Mollusca 

 of Greenland, publishes this species as named in MS. by Holboll S. Eschrichtii. 

 But Mighels's specific name antedates that of Holboll, and the S. costnlata 

 of Kiener (according to Nyst a synonym of S. tenuis) only dates from 

 1842. Consequently, the species must retain the name -given by Mighels. 

 There are some further consequences connected with the establishment of 

 Mighels's name. On the ground that Beck's name was valid, and that Opalia 

 Adams (1853) is synonymous with Acirsa Mbrch (1857), Mbrch in 1874 re- 

 named Opalia borealis Gould 0. Wroblewskyi ; and, in ignorance of this, two 

 years later Tapparone-Canefri gave it the specific name of Gouldii on the same 

 grounds, and even went further and renamed Opalia, the ranking generic or 

 subgeneric name, Psychrosoma, on account of some confusion of ideas on his 

 own part in relation to the revision (in a paper of Carpenter's) by the Messrs. 

 Adams of their subgenus Opalia: a revision which they thought necessary on 

 account of the establishment of the subgenus Acirsa by Mbrch subsequent to 

 the institution of Opalia, which wpuld have included both. As a result, Dr. 

 Gould's subgeneric name will stand, and the others fall into synonymy. 



