﻿I l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [vol. 47 



sulcus. The species which is adopted by Fischer to bear the name 

 of granifera, has a shallow sulcus, removed from the vicinity of the 

 suture, and belongs in the section Colubrellina Fischer, as recog- 

 nized by Cossmann. This latter identification would place R. granif- 

 era (Lam.) Fischer, among the Ranellas, but it cannot be taken 

 as typical, since Bowdich and Blainville had both selected as the 

 type, from among Lamarck's species, the R. bufonia Gmelin, 

 which must be retained in that capacity, since Lamarck himself did 

 not select any type, and Bowdich, his friend and pupil, prepared his 

 " Elements " under the supervision of the elder naturalist. If any 

 one were disposed to fall back on the " first species " they would be 

 obliged to accept R. crassa Dillwyn, as that is the type of Mont- 

 fort's Buffo referred to by Cuvier first in the list he gave on the 

 occasion of the first publication of the genus Ranclla; the French 

 Ranelle of 1812 being an absolutely " nude " appellation, not entitled 

 to recognition. 



For the Bursa of Bolten Montfort proposed the name Buffo (not 

 Buffo Lacepede, 1788) with B. spadicens (= M. crassus Dillwyn 

 or R. granulata Lam.) as type. In 181 1 Perry gave the name Biplex 

 to a group which is the equivalent of Gyrineum Link, but which has 

 been retained by Fischer in a sectional sense for the Biplex perca of 

 Perry, a remarkable compressed form, first made known in Perry's 

 work. A year later in his Extrait d'un Cours, Lamarck indicated 

 his genus by the nude vernacular name of "Ranelle," which was 

 introduced into nomenclature by Cuvier, in 1817, under the Latin 

 form of Ranclla. Cuvier adopts Montfort's Apollon and for the pre- 

 occupied Buffo substitutes Ranclla, as of Lamarck; and gives a list 

 of species which makes Lamarck's genus the equivalent of the earlier 



Gyrineum. 



In the same year Schumacher proposed a genus Bufonaria, which 

 is the equivalent of Montfort's Buffo, section a being typified by R. 

 spinosa Lamarck, and section /? by Murex scrobilator Linne. For 

 the tritonoid form called Ranella gigantea by Lamarck, he proposed 

 a genus Gyriua (not Gyrimts Linne, 1767) ; and for another, 

 Murex lampas Linne, the genus Lampas (not Lampas Montfort 

 1808), which is practically identical with scrobilator in general 

 characters. 



Lamarck made his own first publication of the name Ranella in 

 the seventh volume of the Animaux sans Vertebres, 1822, after he 

 had become blind, and in the same year his pupil and friend, Bow- 

 dich, in the first part of his Elements of Conchology, cites as his 

 sole example or type of the genus Ranella, the R. bufonia Gmelin. 



