BIVALVIA. 159 
If this diagnosis be adhered to, it is obvious that the living shell (Mactra triangularis) 
which M. Deshayes has taken for the type of the new genus Goodallia must be discarded 
from it, as it has a strongly denticulated margin. 
Goodallia of Turton has by general assent been suppressed as untenable, and the 
resuscitation of the name by M. Deshayes will be at the expense of some confusion. 
If that name be admitted, it must stand upon its own merits wholly irrespective of 
Turton or of the friangularis, and upon the reversion of the dental formula. Should that 
be constant, it may be considered a generic distinction ; and in these older Tertiary shells 
of M. Deshayes, as well as the shell under consideration, there appears to be an absence 
of the lateral tooth which is present in all the small species of true Asfarte. 
These shells of M. Deshayes seem to be the only representatives of our present genus 
in the Paris Basin. 
WOODIA. Deshayes, 1858. 
Generic Character. “ Testa subrotunda, equivalvis, equilateralis, clausa, levigata vel 
eacentricé striata; marginibus oblique crenulatis. Cardo crassiusculus, in valoula dextra 
unidentatus ; dente magno, triangulari, medvano ; in medio subcanaliculatus, in valvula 
sinistra bidentatus ; dentibus inequalibus divaricatis ; aliquantisper dentibus lateralibus 
obsoletis. Nymphaea minime depresse, ligamentum minimum externum ferentes. Cicatri- 
cule musculares minime, equales, ovate vel subrotunde. Linea pallealis simplex.” — 
Deshayes. 
M. Deshayes has proposed the above name as generic for the reception of some 
species of shells of which be considers Zelina digitaria, Linn., to be the type. In my 
Monograph of the Crag Mollusca this shell is described under the name of Astarfe, as 
I thought it merely an aberrant form of that genus; and although I feel complimented 
by the intention of that able conchologist, I am not now convinced that the differences 
between it and Astarte are sufficient to constitute a generic separation. I thought it 
possible that, when the animal of the Mediterranean shell became known, it might 
present some peculiar distinction ; but I doubted whether the shell itself would justify 
a generic removal. 
There are three species from the Paris Basin, figured by M. Deshayes under the above 
generic name, which cannot fairly be included in the genus Aszarte, and also one from our 
English Lower Tertiaries, for which I have been obliged to adopt the name of Woodia. 
These older Tertiary fossils not only differ from the genus Astar/e, but they appear to 
me to differ from the generic character pertaining to Zed/ina digitaria, Linn. In this 
latter shell the connector is placed wholly upon the exterior on a prominent fulcrum; but 
in the present fossils from the older Tertiaries the ligament is situated in a linear de- 
pression within the dorsal margin, although it probably acted in a ligamental manner over 
