116 



River John, Wallace, Charles River, and Pugwash, in Northumberland 

 Strait. We did not find traces even of oysters between Cape Breton and 

 Prince Edward Island, nor in any other part of Northumberland Strait 

 where the bottom is deeper than five or six fathoms, that is to say, not in 

 any of the open parts " (Whiteaves).* 



The exterior of the shell of the shorter and more rounded variety of the 

 Canadian oyster is not unlike that of some forms of the English species, but 

 the muscular impression in the interior of each valve is always dark in the 

 former, and white in the latter. Dall, also, has recently shown that the 

 English oyster is a typical Ostrea, which is monsecious and produces '.' large 

 embryos which are incubated for a considerable period in the parental gill 

 lamina," and that the common oyster of Canada and the north-eastern 

 United States belongs to a "group characterized by Vjeing dioecious and 

 discharging the seminal products directly into the water, which must take 

 the name Crassosirea, Sacco. " This is typified by Ostrea Virginiana, Gmel., 

 and represented in the present European fauna by Ostrea angulata, Lam., 

 known there as the Portuguese oyster. "f 



Family Pectinidfe. 

 Pecten (Chlamys) Islandicus, Miiller. 



Ostrea Islandica, Miiller (1770) ; and O. Fabricius (1780). 

 Pecten Islandicus, Chemnitz (1784) ; Lamarck, et auct. 

 Pecten PeaJeii, Conrad (1831). 

 Chlamys Islandica, Fischer (1886) ; and Verril] (1897). 



A common species in the north Atlantic, the type of Bolten's genus or 

 subgenus Chlamys. On the American side it is known to range from Cape 

 Cod to Hudson Bay and Strait, and Greenland, from low-water mark to 100 

 fathoms in depth. Off the Nova Scotian coast it is said by Willis to be 

 common at Halifax Harbour, St. Margaret's Bay, and Sable Island ; on the 

 Bay of Fundy side Verkruzen found it at Annapolis Basin. From New 

 Brunswick it is recorded as having been taken a't Grand Manan by Stimp- 

 son; in the Bay of Fundy by the U. S. Fish Commission, in 1872, and in 

 L'Etanff Harbour in 1886. In the Gulf and mouth of the River St. Law- 

 rence it has been dredged at many localities, by Packard, Bell, Sir J. W. 

 Dawson, and the writer. 



As a Canadian Pleistocene fossil it is recorded by Sir J. W. Dawson as 

 having been collected at St. John, N.B. ; Anticosti and Riviere du Loup, 

 P.Q., also at Labrador ; and in 1896 Mr. A. P. Low obtained good specimens 

 of it from the Pleistocene clay at Richmond Gulf, on the east coast of Hud- 

 son Bay. 



* Report of the Department of Marine and Fisheries for 1873, Ottawa, 1874. 



+ Transactions of the Wagner Free Institute of Science of Philadelphia, vol. in., p. 671. 



