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ASTARTE CREBRICOSTATA, Forbes. 



? Crassina depressa, Brown (1844) variety ; fide Jeffreys. 



Astarte crehricostata, Forbes (1847) ; Forbes and Hanley (1848) ; et auct. 



In 1871, 1872 and 1873 several living examples of a peculiar little Astarte 

 with regular and rather numerous concentric ribs and a light brownish- 

 yellow epidermis, were dredged by the writer in the deep sea mud (112 to 

 313 fathoms) of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to the north, south and south 

 east of the Island of Anticosti. Those collected in 1871 were at first 

 identified by Jeffreys with A. sulcata, var. minor, but they were regarded 

 by Verrill as probably a dwarf form of A. lens, Stimpson. Subsequently, 

 the writer came to the conclusion that the whole of these specimens represent 

 a small, local variety of A. crehricostata, also that they are probably identical 

 with the A. suhcequilatera and possibly with the A. oblonga of Sowerby. In 

 a letter to the writer, dated May 26, 1876, Jeffreys expressed the opinion 

 that they are "apparently a dwarf form of Crassina depressa, Brown { = A. 

 crehricostata, Forbes)." The late Dr. P. P. Carpenter, to whom a few 

 specimens were submitted a little later, furnished the following notes upon 

 them : " I cannot perceive any difference at ail, inside or out, by which 

 these can be separated from some of the A. crehricostata, Forbes, dredged at 

 Finmark by McAndrew. Yours, being eroded at the beak, look different, 

 and the largest of yours is very small compared with the Finmarkians. 

 Moreover some of yours have fewer ribs in proportion ; but others exactly 

 correspond. Your shells show considerable variations in outline, the Fin- 

 markians are very uniform. I have put a mark against a shell on your 

 tablet, that would make a good crehricostata. I should take your shells to 

 be the A. suhequilatera of Sowerby, jum'oi', as I think was your opinion. 

 One of your transverse ones, which I have also marked, would do sufficiently 

 well for A. oblonga, Sowerby, junior, were it not that the ribs do not evanesce 

 as there described. Every one finds Astartes puzzling." 



Professor Verrill thinks that the shell described and figured by Gould as 

 A. crehricostata, in the second edition of the Invertebrata of Massachusetts, 

 is not the A. crehricostata of Forbes, and that the former should be called 

 A. lens, Stimpson. The shell that Gould identifies with A. crehricostata is 

 said to have been collected off Halifax, N.S., ("young specimens in 

 abundance ") by AVillis ; at Anticosti Island (Stimpson) ; and at Dauphin 

 Harbour, Labrador, by Packard. Verrill says that A. lens occurs in the 

 Bay of Fundy on soft bottoms in 30 to 130 fathoms. 



Astarte crenata. Gray. 



Off Bear Head, Anticosti, in 120 fathoms; two living specimens, which 

 were dredged by the writer in 1871 and identified with this species by 

 Jeffreys in 1877. Three very similar specimens have since been dredged 



