34 



NOTE ON THE GENUS PANOPE, MENAED. 

 ]}y Dr. W. H. Dall. 



Bead 12th Januarij, 1912. 



Ox the 17t]i of December, 1806, before the Faculty of the Museum 

 of Natural History of Paris, France, M. Menard de la Groye read 

 a paper entitled " Memoire sur un Nouveau Genre de Coquille 

 bivalve-equivalve de la famille des Soletioides ", etc., which was 

 printed as a separate pamphlet in small (quarto of tliirty-seven pages, 

 with one plate and a separate title-page, dated January, 1807. On 

 the title-page it is indicated that the paper would appear in the 

 issue of the Annales for February, 1807, as No. 19 of the collection ; 

 but in my copy, which is annotated by the author himself, tliis 

 statement is corrected to read the issues for March and April, 

 Nos. 50 and 51 of the collection of memoirs. In any case, the issue 

 of the pamphlet antedates by at least a month the issue in the Annales. 

 Turning to the latter, we see that not only is the memoir condensed 

 from thirty-seven pages to nine, but the title is slightly shortened by 

 leaving out the 'bivalve-equivalve', and it stops short after 'Solenoides'. 

 Other important changes are made, as we shall see. 



In the memoir of January, after thirty preliminary pages, the 

 genus is formally described under the name Fanope, whicli is stated 

 on p. 16 to be the well-known name of a sea nymph in classical 

 mythology. This name appears also on p. 30. No other Latin 

 version of it occurs in the memoir ; elsewhere the French equivalent 

 alone is used, or the initial P. M. Menard states expressly that 

 Lamarck agreed with him as to the necessity for a new name for the 

 genus, but does not state on what grounds. 



The reason may well have been that twenty-one years before 

 Lamarck applied the generic name of Glycimeris to this genus in his 

 Prodrome of 1799, Da Costa had given it in binomial form to the 

 Area (ihjcimeris of Linne. 



In 1606 Ulysses Aldrovandus, in his work on animals without red 

 blood, discussed the species to which the ancients had given the name 

 of Chama glycymeris (p. 472), and figures a Mya (?), an Anodonta, and 

 the recent Panope of the Mediterranean. He does not apply any 

 special name to either of them. In the third book of Lister's 

 Historioi Conchyliorum (edition of 1687) he figures the same shell 

 under the caption " Sect. 10. De Chamis " and refers to it (fig. 258) 

 as " Chama glycymeris Aldrovandi", although it is only one of 

 Aldrovandus' species. This citation has been accepted by uearh' all 

 subsequent autliors. Gualtieri in 1742 referred it to his group of 

 Musculus and described it in a phrase beginning "■ Mas culm ruyis 

 transversis" , etc. Finally, Born (Test. Mus. Cses. Vind., 1780, p. 20) 

 gives it the binomial name of Mya glycymeris, with a figure and 

 references to the earlier authors, and is followed by Chemnitz in 1782 

 and Gmelin in 1792. It is to this shell that Menard gives the name 

 of Panope Aldrovandi in his January memoir. 



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