^TsoT'] PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. 473 



The asi)ect of these shells indicates for them a Miocene age, to 

 which they were assij^ned by the late paleontologist F. B. Meek. The 

 matrix is a light-bruwnor grayish, tine grained, rather hard sandstone, 

 exactly like many of the Miocene sandstones of the adjacent Alaskan 

 coast. Taking the occurrence of the beds of lignite into consideration 

 we maj" suppose that they are, like the Alaskan lignites of the oppo- 

 site shore of Bering Sea, immediately succeeded by a bed of marin<; 

 Miocene, from which these fossils may have l)een derived. In cleaning 

 off' some adherent matter it was found that a few small particles of a 

 stony alga still adhered to the fossils and retained some of its original 

 green color. This shows that the alga is not a fossil, and indicates 

 that the specimens were obtained upon the beach, where they may 

 have remained some time after being weathered out of the original 

 matrix. One specimen, a large oyster, is somewhat worn, as if by the 

 waves, and still retains in its shell substance something of the purple 

 color which characterized the shell while living. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE SPECIES. 

 Ostrea gigas TLuiibeig. 



Ostrea gigas Tbunberg, Kong. Vet. Ak. HaniU. t. xiv, for 1793, p. 140, pi. 6, figs. 

 1-3; Lischke, Jap. Meeresconcb, i, p. 174, 1869; ii, p. 160, pi. 14, figs. 1, 2, 

 1871; HI, p. 114, 1874; Dunker, Ind. Moll. Jap. p. 249, 1882. 



Ostrea Laperousti Sclireuck, Bull. Imp. Acad. Sci. 8t. Peterb, i\', ]>. 411, 1861; Eeiseii 

 in Annirl., Moll., p. 475, ]tl. 19, ligs. 1-6, 1867. 



Ostrea taliciin-haiiensis Crosse, Journ. de Concliyl., x, p. 149, pi. 6, tig. 6, 1862. 



Ostrea talienwahnensis 8by., Conch. Icon. Ostrea, jjI. 10, tig. 21, 1871. 



? Ostrea iorealis Jay, Perry's Japan Exp. p. 296. 



Coalmine Bay, Gulf of Penjinsk, Okhotsk Sea, W. Stimpson, Mus. 

 lleg. No. 4787. 



The fossil comprises the whole of the upper and most of the lower 

 valve, held together by the indurated matrix and measuriii^g about 103 

 millimetres long by 90 ndllimetres in greatest width. The specimen is 

 somewhat waterworn, evidently after weathering out of the matrix, 

 but retains i)artly the purplish (;olor common to this species. It 

 ajjpears to agree in all essentials with the recent shell. 



This oyster has, like the 0. rirf/inica of America (which it much 

 resembles), a very wide range in latitude, extending from the China 

 seas to the west coast of the island of Sakhalin and in Japan to 

 Nagasaki. But the fossil, so far as its condition permits us to judge, 

 represents the southern form of the spe(;ies rather than that which it 

 assumes near the northern extreme of its present range. 



Setnele Stimpsoni n. s. 



PI. LVi, tig. 5. 



Shell sub-orbicular, moderately compressed, sculi)tured with numer- 

 ous wide, low, rather irregular concentric ridges which are angulated 



