DOLABELLA. 3U3 



DOLABELLA Lamauck, ISOl. 



Dolabella Lamauck, SystSme anim. sans vcrt^bros, 1801, p. 02. 

 Apb/sia (in part) Rani;, Hist., nat. ajilysioiLS, 182S, p. 30. 

 Dolabella Pilsuuy, 'Pryon's Manual conch., 1891), 16, p. 150. 



General body-form conic, wide and obliquely truncate behind, narrower 

 in front. Integument more or less warty. Head bearing in front a pair of 

 subcylindrical buccal tentacles, slit above; rhinophores much nearer the ante- 

 rior margin than to the dorsal sUt, similar to those of Tethys. Eyes minute, 

 in front of the rhinophores ; posterior area of the body defined by an obliquely 

 transverse ridge. Parapodial lobes united save for a dorsal slit, more open at 

 the ends, the anterior insertions of the lobes contiguous, parted only by the 

 spermatic groove. Mantle not nearly covering the ctenidium, produced in a 

 folded siphon behind. Branchial cavity very large. Genital orifice usually 

 under the posterior portion of the ctenidium, penis very long, near right buccal 

 tentacle. Hypobranchial gland multiple. 



Shell soUd and calcareous, hatchet shaped, loosely coiled, the free spire 

 obliquely decurved, heavily calloused; sinus deep and concave; margins reflexed. 



Type: — Dolabella scapula (Martyn, 1786). 



The earliest record of this form is found in D'Amboinsche Rariteitkamer 

 and in the Thesaurus imaginum Piscium Testaceorum, of Georg Eberhard 

 Rumpf, printed in Amsterdam, the first named in 1705, and the second in 1711, 

 the same plates being used in each. Figure 5 of Plate 10 represents the animal 

 designated as "Umax marina tertia," while fig. 12 of Plate 40 reproduces the 

 shell, which is termed "tertia species operculi callorum." That the shell so 

 figured belonged to the animal shown on Plate 10, was not positively known 

 until the dissections made by Cuvier (1804) of specimens collected by Peron 

 at Mauritius, confirmed the statement of the latter as to the identity of the 

 two forms. The same shell was figured by Martyn in the Universal concholo- 

 gist in 1786, Plate 99, with the binomial name Patella scapula. In 1801 Lamarck 

 estabUshed the new genus Dolabella for the shell figured by Rumph, with the 

 name Dolabella callosa, which is of course antedated by the publication of Martyn, 

 the genotype being now recognized as Dolabella scapula (Martyn). 



Our anatomical knowledge of the genus is mainly drawn from the brief 

 descriptions of Cuvier (1804), the monograph of Rang (1828), and the more 

 recent works of Amaudrut (1886), MazzarelU and Zuccardi (1890), Gilchrist 

 (1894), Lacaze-Duthiers (1898), EUot (1899), and Bergh (1905, 1907); all of 

 which are more or less fragmentary. 



