RANDOM NOTES ON NATURAL HISTORY. 



Remarks on the Omission of Certain Species 



of Shells in Previous Papers on 



the Shell-Bearing Mollusca 



of Rhode Island. 



[BY HORACE F. CARPENTER.] 



In a letter to the editors of Random 

 Notes Prof. A. E. Verrill says : " I judge 

 that the writer on shells in yonr journal is 

 unacquainted with my paper (1881)," de- 

 scribing new species of shells found in New 

 England waters, and " lie also seems to be un- 

 aware that the United States Fish Commission 

 spent the summer of 1880 at Newport, and 

 dredged extensively in Narragan sett Bay and 

 all the other waters of the State of Rhode 

 Island, and that accounts of these' opera- 

 tions have been published." These re- 

 marks were probabl}' made on account 

 of the omission of certain new species de- 

 scribed in the works referred to, and on 

 this account, and that this charge may not 

 be brought up again b\- others, I omit the 

 regular paper this month, to explain the 

 reason of the omission of these new species 

 in their proper places in previous papers. 



I am not ignorant of the existence of 

 these publications, as I have before me the 

 "Report upon the Invertebrate Animals of 

 Vineyard Sound and Adjacent Waters," by 

 A. E. Verrill and S. I. Smith, published in 

 1874, the same being extracted from Prof. 

 S. F. Baird's Fish Commissioners' report ; 

 also the " Catalogue of Marine Mollusca, 

 added to the fauna of New England during 

 the past ten years," by A. E. Verrill, 

 taken from the "Transactions of the Conn. 

 Acad.," from April to July, 1882 ; and the 

 " Second Catalogue of Mollusca recentl}^ 

 added to the fauna of New England," by 

 A. E. Verrill, also taken from the " Trans- 

 actions of the Conn. Acad.," April to 

 July, 1884. The first-mentioned volume is 

 just what it represents itself to be by its 

 title and needs no comment ; due mention 

 is made in my papers of all species described 

 in it ; the second includes within its pages 

 the shells found from Nova Scotia and 

 New Brunswick to the Gulf Stream, off the 

 southern coasts of New England, embracing 

 all depths down to 600 fathoms, while the 

 third mentions but three species belonging 

 to Rhode Island, and extends its range to 

 Cape Hatteras, and in depth to 2,000 

 fathoms. There have been quite a number 



of new species added to the fauna of New 

 England, but I have never seen a specimen 

 of one of them, and am not very liable to, 

 for although suites of specimens of these 

 shells have been presented to public 

 museums and societies of natural history, 

 and in some cases to societies dead aui,! 

 fossilized j'^ears ago, who have no mem- 

 bers who know or care anything about them, 

 and where these specimens are laid away 

 as useless material, private individuals 

 who might be benefited by them, cannot 

 get them for love or mone}'. I have tried 

 man}' times to obtain specimens of these 

 shells for study, but without success. 



The papers on " The Shell - Bearing 

 Mollusca of Rhode Island," were not in- 

 tended to cover the wliole coast of the 

 United States, or even of New England, 

 but simply those forms which have been, or 

 are liable to be, found within the limits of 

 our own little state. I ask the reader if 

 those shells which have been found only to 

 the north, or to the south of us, or those 

 dredged from 500 to 10,000 feet, 50 or 

 100 miles from shore, belong to the fauna 

 of Rhode Island, or to the deep-sea fauna 

 of the Atlantic Ocean. 



I have thus far described the species be- 

 longing to the first eleven families of the 

 class Gasteropoda which inhabit our state. 

 I will now notice in their proper order, 

 those species referred to in the above 

 works, which were not mentioned in the 

 previous papers on "The Shell - Bea,ring 

 Mollusca of Rhode Island," and in future 

 will take care not to leave any loop-hole of 

 this kind open for comment. I give the 

 species and the distribution geographically, 

 but without description, as that would 

 occupy too much space, and refer the 

 reader to the original works. 



Family 1. Muricid.e. 



See Random Notes, No. 5, p. 9. 



Sub-family 1. Muricinse. 



Genus Trophon, Montfort. 



Trophon clathratus, var. Gunneri. (Lo- 

 ven.) 



Dist., Greenland, Iceland, Nova Zembla, 

 etc., etc. 



Trophon Fabricii, Moller. 



Dist., Gulf of St. Lawrence, Davis 

 Straits. 



Trophon Lintonii, Verrill & Smith, Mss. 



One specimen onl}' was dredged off Mar- 

 tha's Vineyard in 70 fathoms in 1882. It 



