60 BULLETIN 111, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



position of Verrill's species, retaining for it Jeffreys's name and rele- 

 gating ^'solidum" to the synonymy. In the meantime, however, 

 more lots of apparently the same, or at least a very closely allied 

 species, were sent in by the Albatross, dredged off Cape Fear, South 

 Carolina, in 731 fathoms; off Jamaica in 966 fathoms; and off the 

 Brazilian coast in 671 fathoms. These later lots Doctor Pilsbry re- 

 moved from typical D. candid.um under the subspecific name of D. c. 

 meridionale. 



Jeffreys's specimens, including his type lot, are now in the National 

 Museum collection, and consist of 10 lots, mostly of fragments, which 

 are scarcely recognizable except when immediately associated with 

 good specimens from the same stations. Besides what appears to be 

 his original series of D. candidum, there are two lots of fair but young 

 and immature specimens, one from "Station 28, Pore. Exp. off Heb- 

 rides in 1,215 fathoms," and the other of two specimens from off the 

 West Coast of Africa and Azores, taken by the Talisman expedition. 

 The shells of the first of these lots answer only fairly well to Jeffreys's 

 composite description; those of the second are obviously of another 

 species and much more closely resemble our own shells from the 

 American coast. A careful comparison of the only really recog- 

 nizable specimen in the Jeffreys collection that can be accepted as the 

 true D. candidum with American shells of the same growth period 

 convinces me of the error of uniting them. Even were the sculp- 

 tural characters more clearly identical, the shining white compact 

 texture of the British specimen makes questionable its union with the 

 soft, chalky American shells, covered as they all are with an ashy or 

 mouse-colored periostricum. Its rate of increase in diameter is also 

 less and the curvature is not quite the same. 



D. candidum Jeffreys, the unnamed Azores specimen, the northern 

 lots of D. ca'pillosum Jeffreys, D. solidum Verrill, and D. c. meridionale 

 Pilsbry and Sharp, are all closely allied species of the same group. 

 It is, however, straining their characters actually to unite them 

 specifically. 



I would therefore restore Verrill's name to the American species, 

 but as his name of solidum is preoccupied I rename it verrilli. Doctor 

 Pilsbry's meridionale must then take priority and the group is re- 

 arranged as follows: 



Dentalium, Tneridionale Pilsbry and Sharp, 1897. 



Dentalium meridionals meridionale Pilsbry and Sharp. 



Dentalium meridionale verrilli, new n'dme{=D. solidum, Verril]= 

 D. candidum Authors) (not of Jeffreys). 



Dentaliura meridionale jamaicense, new subspecies. 



