314 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.54. 



family, a task beyond my powers under present conditions. I shall 

 therefore only attempt to review our West American species, and to 

 determine the original types and consequent characteristics of some 

 of the more familiar genera of the family. To these data I add 

 references to the various names which have been given to members 

 of the group, making a basis from which later workers may be able 

 to proceed with the review of the whole family. Some scattered 

 names may have escaped discovery during my search, but this is a 

 misfortune hardly to be avoided in such work. The rules by which 

 I have been guided in recognition of valid names are those of the 

 International Committee on Zoological Nomenclature and, while 

 applying these rules with precision as far as the facts are known 

 to me, I have endeavored to use in doubtful cases a rational conserva- 

 tism, changing nothing for the mere love of change and avoiding 

 the whimsicalities by means of which some recent writers have en- 

 deavored to justify their retention of familiar but unfortunately in- 

 valid names. 



The Turritidae are an ancient group, originating in Mesozoic 

 time and have naturally a world-wide distribution. There are prob- 

 ably more species of the family in the recent fauna than of any 

 other family of mollusks. The distinctness of the group was recog- 

 nized by Rumphius as early as 1704 and his name Turris with his 

 typical species has been adopted into binomial nomenclature in its 

 original sense, though the group has been multifariously subdivided 

 since. It is a pity that Lamarck disregarded the work of his prede- 

 cessors so far as to apply to the group a name different from that 

 by which it had been known for nearly a century, thus necessitating 

 an inconvenient revision nearly another century later. 



Genus TURRIS Bolten, 1799. 



The name Turns for the typical part of the genus was given by 

 Bolten a year earlier than Lamarck's application of the name Pleuro- 

 toma to the same type. Still earlier, Helbling had given the name 

 Fusus to a group consisting chiefly of Turritidae, but fortunately, 

 by applying the method of elimination to his assembly, the name 

 Fusus could be fixed upon a small and inconspicuous group of Gas- 

 tropods, and a shifting of names which would have been practically 

 intolerable was thus avoided. The rejection by the International 

 Committee of the anonymous Museum Calonnianum of 1797, removes 

 that source of confusion from consideration in systematic binomial 

 nomenclature, though in this instance the author of that work merely 

 followed Rumphius, and the sole identifiable species in his list is the 

 type of Turris Bolten. 



Link in 1807 followed Lamarck, thousrh (possibily due to a typo- 

 graphical error) the name is spelled Pleurotome in his publication. 



