214 MOLLUSC A OF BERING ISLAND. 



ans, is almost always broken, defaced, truucated, and unpleasiug by the'| 

 time the waves bave cast it on the beach. Tbe shell is so thin and the| 

 epidermis so strong that the young shells in drying always break; I have 

 seen many hundreds but never one adult with the apex complete. The 

 ei^idermis is also much more fugitive thau in the southern form and 

 rarely covers the shell, or, when it does, it comes off as soon as the shell 

 is dried for the cabinet. The fry has a pretty horn-colored shell, with 

 revolving keels like a Torellia; the young animal much resembles a 

 pteropod, has two ciliated, wing like, lateral tlaps with which it pro- 

 gresses and IS brilliantly colored with metallic grass-green. I have 

 taken it in the tow-net far from land, which may account for its wide 

 distribution. Tbe adult animal is i)inkish liesh-color more or less mot- 

 tled with slaty or purple streaks in great variety; the foot is short for 

 the size of tlje animal, the nucleus of the concentric operculum is not 

 terminal but just within the margin on one side of the longer axis of 

 it, as in some (but not most) buccinums. 



The adult shell is more turreted, has deeper channels and coarser 

 sculpture than the canccllatum ; the epidermis is longer, thicker, and 

 coarser; the transverse riblets in the young are 12-13 to the whorl, in 

 the adult, 19-21; in cancellatum the adult has 34-38 of them and they 

 extend more distinctly over the periphery ; in oregonense the sutures are 

 deeper, there is a flattened space on tbe whorl just in front of them, tbe 

 whorls do not increase in such rapid proportion, and the mouth of the 

 shell is sborter in proportion to the whole length than in cancellatum. 

 The varices in the latter are less numerous, less constant, and less raised 

 above the ordinary riblets than in oregonense. I have probably exam- 

 ined in the field more specimens of oregonense than all other naturalists 

 put together bave ever seen. In the iSTational Museum is a good series 

 of it and of tbe true ca^iceUatum from Patagonia, the latter brought back 

 by the Wilkes exploring expedition. With this material I have no 

 besitation in declaring, in common with Gould, Carpenter, A. Adams, 

 Lischke, and Dunker, tbe distinctness of the two species. It should also 

 be remembered that the most adjacent extremes of their distribution 

 are separated by some thousands of miles. I have no confidence in any 

 reported occurrence of cancellatum in Japan, the statement being doubt- 

 less due to an erroneous identification, or an error in labelling. Peru 

 is the furthest north that I have heard claimed for cancellatum^ and this 

 with much doubt; oregonense is not known south of San Diego, Cal., 

 if it even reaches so far, as it has never yet been reported south of 

 Santa Barbara. 



Trichotropis insignis Middeudoiff. 



Bering Island, Grebnitzki. 



This species is extremely variable in form and sculpture. T. solida 

 Aurivillius presents some resemblance to certain of these varieties, 

 with which it should be compared, though their identity cannot be as- 

 sumed. 



