396 



" The specimens of this species collected by Mr. Richardson on Van- 

 couver Island in 1871 and 1872, and referred to in the second part of 

 this volume are nearly all of small size, though one individual from 

 Blunden Point, as there stated, is fully five inches and a half in height. 

 Some of them are higher than long, with a short hinge-line, and others 

 longer than high, with a long hinge-line. Their sculpture also is equally 

 variable, and consist.: either of continuous, concentric or radiating and 

 divergent plications, or of corresponding rows of tubercules, in addition 

 to the lines of growth." 



'• In a paper on ' Cretaceous Fossils from the Vancouver Island 

 region,'* Dr. C. A. White doubts the correctness of the identification of 

 the specimens collected by Mr. Richardson with /. undulatoplicatus, but 

 they agree very well with Roemer's description, though perhaps not quite 

 so well with his figure of that species. 



" However this may be, several small Inoceraviij which are evidently 

 conspecific with those collected by Mr. Richardson, were obtained by Dr. 

 C. F. Newcombe, in 1892, on the Comox River, V.I., and kindly presented 

 by him to the Museum of the Geological Survey. With one exception, 

 these specimens from Comox are all longer than high and have a long 

 hinge-line. Their sculpture consists of concentric plications, which are 

 rarely quite parallel with the closely and regularly disponed impressed 

 lines of growth, upon the umbonal and central regions of each valve, and 

 of radiating and divergent folds anteriorly. 



"The only specimen collected by Dr. Newcombe on the Comox River 

 that is higher than long, with a short hinge-line, has very peculiar sculp- 

 ture. In addition to the ordinary growth-lines, a nearly central and con- 

 tinuous longitudinal plication runs from the beak of the left valve (the 

 only one preserved) to the base, a little in advance of the centre of the 

 latter. On the anterior side, five simple plications radiate obliquely for- 

 ward and outward from this subcentral fold, and on the posterior side 

 four plications, three of which are simple and one bifurcating, radiate 

 also obliquely forward and outward from it. 



"In a letter received in August 0894) the writer was informed by 

 Mr. T. W. Stanton (of the U.S. Geological Survey) that he had been 

 recently studying a number of specimens of Inocerami with divergent 

 radiating plications, from the Niobrara shales of Colorado, that he has no 

 hesitation in referring to the /. digitatus of Sowerby, as re-defined and 

 figured by Schmidt and Schluter, and that it seems to him quite likely 

 that /. undidatoplicahcs, Roemer, is only the young of that species. 

 Schluter, in his paper on the Cretaceous Inocerami, is, indeed, inclined to 

 keep these two forms separate, but Schmidt (op, cit.) regards both /.. 



♦Bulletin U.S. Geological Survey, No. 51, pt. 3, p. 37. 



