127 



(PORTLANDIA. GLACIALIS (Wood). 



No recent specimens of this shell, which is such a characteristic fossil of 

 the Lecla ciay in eastern Canada, have yet been found south of the Strait of 

 Belle Isle, on this side of the Atlantic. In 1899, however, Mr. Low dredged 

 four fine living specimens of it in Richmond Gulf, on the east coast of 

 Hudson Strait, on a muddy bottom, in 15-25 fathoms. 



G. O. Sars, and more recently Verrill (in 1897) think that this shell is the 

 Nucula arctica of Gray (1819), and that it should be called Portlanclia 

 arctica (Gray), as it is the type of Morch's genus Portlandia. Dall, how- 

 ever, in 1898, dissents from this conclusion, as far as the specific name is 

 concerned, and maintains that the proper name for it is Portlandia glacialis 

 (Wood) for the following reasons. " The original Nucula arctica^ Gray, is 

 indeterminable from the brief diagnosis, and was not figured. It has been 

 identified by several naturalists (Hanley, Smith and others) with Y. hyper- 

 borea, Torell, and by others with Y. glacialis, Wood ( + Y. truncata, Brown, 

 -f- Y. portlandica, Hitchcock). From MoUer's description of his Y. arctica 

 as 'planiuscula Isevi, nitida, luteo-vel fusco virente,' and the number of 

 teeth he ascribes to it, I feel compelled to believe that it could not have 

 been Y. glacialis, whatever Gray's N. arctica was."* And in a foot note to 

 this last sentence he adds : " In this also I agree with Hanley and Smith in 

 referring Gray's species to the hyperhorea group rather than to that of 

 truncata, Brown, as supposed by Torell, Jeffreys and Morch)." 



Megayoldia thraci^formis (Storer). 



Nucula thracicEformis, Storer (1838) ; and Gould (1841). 

 Nucula navicularis, Couthouy (1839) ; young. 

 Yoldia angularis, Miillei- (1842) ; teste Miirch. 

 Megayoldia thraciceformis, Verrill and Bush (1897). 



Grand Manan, " in 25 fathoms, mud, oflF Duck Island " (Stimpson) ; Bay 

 of Fundy, 10 to 100 fathoms (Verrill); fishing banks off Halifax (Willis) ; 

 Halifax Harbour (J. M. Jones). Off the north-west coast of Cape Breton 

 Island (dead specimens), and Gulf of St. Lawrence, about half way between 

 Anticosti and the Gasp^ peninsula, in 200 fathoms, mud, rare and small, but 

 living, dredged by the writer. Greenland (MoUer — Yoldia angularis). 



* Transactions of the Wagner Free Institute of Science of Philadelphia, vol. in., pp. 

 694 and 595. 



