GASTROPODA. 935 
Raphistomida,| 
euomphaloids and therefore quite different genetically from Raphistoma, while 
Scalites is not sufficiently known to be placed satisfactorily. 
It is not worth while to review the literature of the genus that appeared during 
the time included between the years 1859 and 1890. It will suffice to say that the 
name gradually attained a somewhat precarious standing among American paleon- 
tologists as a convenient designation for lenticuliar shells which in other respects 
were supposed to be of the type of Plewrotomarna. Taking Miller’s list of species 
referred to Raphistoma* as a fair example of the use to which the genus had attained 
in recent years, it is evident that it is truly an incongruous assemblage. Of the 
nineteen species probably only the three originally referred to the genus really 
belong there. The others belong mostly to our new pleurotomarian genera Hotomaria 
and Liospira, and to Raphistomina, while several are too ill known to justify a definite 
arrangement under any genus. 
In 18907; Koken endeavored to establish Raphistoma and to show its relations to 
Pleurotomaria on the one side and Huomphalus on the other. His effort has not 
proved entirely successful because he failed to grasp fully the essential peculiarities 
of the type species, Ff. staminea.{ Unfortunately we cannot follow his arguments 
as closely as we would like, hence we are not quite certain that our objections to his 
statements are always fully justified. The main point, however, is that he holds to 
Raphistoma asa good genus. According to our views he should have gone a step 
farther and removed the genus entirely from the Pleurotomariide. The absence of 
a true slit-band alone seems to us fatal to a reference of Raphistoma to that family, 
and it is surely so when coupled with the rather obvious relations in which the 
genus stands with Hecyliopterus and Kccyliomphalus on the one hand and Helictoma 
on the other. Still, we are inclined to believe that Koken has overestimated the 
closeness of the line of the development which he seeks to establish between 
Raphistoma and Eccyliopterus. 
Koken’s observations are based chiefly upon European specimens which he has 
identified with Raphistoma in accordance, as he believes, with Hall’s description of 
the genus in the first paleontological volume of the New York Survey. He starts 
with Schlotheim’s Huomphalus qualieriatus which he regards as the Huropean 
representative of our Ff. staminea. Considering the great variety of shells that have 
been referred to the species qualteriatus, it is to be regretted that Koken did not 
* North Amer. Geol. and Pal., p. 424, 1889. 
+N. Jahrb, f. Mineralogie, etc,, Beilagebd, vi, p, 315. 
+1t is customary to cite Maclurea striata Emmons, as the type of Raphistoma, probably because the description of that 
species is the first to follow the generic description. Krom Hall’s remarks under R staminea (op. cit., p. 29) it is quite evident 
that this is a mistake, for he says distinctly that ‘the generic character” was but ‘‘obscurely indicated upon” the striata. 
Besides, neither Emmous nor Hall refer to the character in their descriptions of the species, while the latter is very particu- 
lar in showing its presence in R. staminea and R. planistria, going so far even as to use a wood-cut because it was not su ffi- 
ciently brought out on the plate. 
