336 OSTREAD^. 



A. STRIATA, Loven. 



With most crowded rows of minute but not prickly scales : 

 umbonal region of the upper valve green ; a triangular depression 

 as in Patelliformis. 



Plate LV. f5g. 1, 6, and Plate LIII. f. 6. 



? Squama magna, Chemnitz, Conch. Cab. vol. viii. p. 87, pi. 77, f. 697 (from 



which A. squama, Gmelin and Wood). 

 ^ Anomia patelliformis. Wood (not Linn.) Index Testaceol. pi. 11, f. 10. 

 „ striata, LovEN, Index Moll. Scandinaviae, p. 29. 



Whether this elegant shell, which is undeniably the 

 striata of Loven, be entitled to specific distinction, is per- 

 haps a point which may be mooted hereafter. The present 

 very limited acquaintance with Anomia, of which scarcely 

 any distinct exotic forms have been described or even met 

 with, at least in our English cabinets, forbids a positive 

 determination of what are the essential specific characters 

 of the shells of this genus, and renders it advisable to 

 follow the opinion of a writer who has incontestably proved 

 his profound powers of observation in his several disserta- 

 tions upon the Testacea of Northern Europe. 



The shape is more or less orbicular, and rarely exhibits 

 much of that straightness in its dorsal outline that is so 

 common in ephippium : its nearest relationship, indeed, is to 

 Patelliformis, which it resembles in the dark-green hue of 

 the subumbonal portion of its interior, in the dull triangular 

 depression above the aperture of the inferior valve (which 

 is so excessively thin, that it is wholly or partially broken 

 in almost every individual we have examined,) in the oc- 

 casional remoteness (for in most the beak is submarginal) 

 of its umbo from the outer edge, the frequent radiation of 

 its exterior by undulating and rather broad streaks of 

 rufous brown, &c. The beautiful example we have deli- 



