232 AUSTRALIAN AND POLYNESIAN LAND AND MARINE MOLLUSCA, 



Professor Yon Marten's in his Critical List of New Zealand 

 Mollusca, p. 46, 1873, distinctly says that divaricata is a collective 

 name for several species ; the true divaricata of Linne is a species of 

 the Mediterranean Sea. I now quote Mr. Sylvanus Hanley from his 

 Ipsa Linnaei Conchy lia, p. 44, 1 855. " The locality being here authen- 

 ticated by the name of the authority for it, becomes of importance. 

 The only Mediterranean species that will at all agree with the 

 description in the " System" is the Lucina, which, originally 

 termed commutata by Phillippi, (Moll. Sicl. Vol. 1, pi. 3, f. 15), 

 was afterwards recognised by him for the true Linnean divaricata. 

 That illustrious naturalist justly remarks, that " magnitudine 

 pisigibba-stria? tenuissirnse" and " Habitat in M. Mediterraneo, 

 Logie" clearly point to the little and delicately sculptured Euro- 

 pean shell, rather than to the coarser, larger, and now commoner 

 West Indian species, which usurps the name in almost every 

 collection." " As corroborative of these convincing arguments (not 

 that our author would have scrupled to unite the two species), it 

 may be mentioned that the figures of the larger species in the 

 works of Bonanni, Lister, and Petiver, books habitually consulted 

 by Linnasus, were passed over in silence by him." 



Pfeiffer in Martini and Chemnitz Conch Cab., second edition by 

 Kiister, p. 268, 1869, does not even mention Wood's name dentata, 

 but makes use of a very recent specific name quadrisidcata, Orb. 

 Lucina dentata, Wood must stand as a genuine species, its legion 

 of synonyms are a disgrace to science, and should never have been 

 created, if authors had paid a little more attention to the strict 

 rules of priority. 



The Eev. J. E. Tenison- Woods, in his Census of Tasmanian 

 Marine Shells, Proceedings Royal Society Tasmania, p. 30, 1877, 

 informs us that Lucina divaricata, Linn, was first found in the 

 Mediterranean, and until lately, when found elsewhere, was 

 thought to be another species. The opinion that Mr. Woods 

 quotes, is not the opinion of Von Martens but his own. The shell 

 quoted by Mr. Woods from Tasmania, is the Lucina divaricata 

 Lam., and to please the egotism of Mr. Cuming, Messrs. Adams 



