NO. 1264. ILLUSTRATIONS OF AMERICAN SHELLS— BALL. 521 
the nanies have to be cited historicalh% Xx\y other course would re- 
sult ill upsetting many of the best-established names of molluscan 
g-enci-a and families with nothinjif but detriment to science. Bolten's 
names, haxing proper references to the literature, do not stand on the 
.same footing-, but his NeptuTiea was a heterogeneous assembl}^ con- 
taining much such a mixture as i^?^si/«Bruguiere, with no type selected. 
The recognizal)le contents of Neptunea Bolten include the following 
genera, which I give in the order in which they have been diagnosed 
)>y other authors: Nassa {reticulata) Lamarck, 1799; Nassaria {nivea) 
Link. 1807; Trophon {inageUanicm) Montfort, 1810; Monoplex (cau- 
datiLs) Perrj^, 1811; Lampusia (rubecula) a,nd Melongena (carmia) Schu- 
macher, 1817; Chrymdomus {antiquus awd contrarms) Swainson, 1840; 
Boreotrojyhon {dathnis) Sars, 1878. So it appears that, even if we 
disregard the absence of a diagnosis and proceed by the method of 
elimination, the present group would not be entitled to the name of 
Niptunea. Link, in 1807, gave a diagnosis and divided Neptunea into 
two unnamed groups, one equivalent to JVassa Lamarck, and the other 
containing the larger forms, with which he included the broad Fasci- 
olarias like J^. tTapeziiLm. 
The genus Atractus Agassiz is an exact synonym of Chrysodomus^ 
and the name had been used for Reptiles in 1828, and In.sects in 1833. 
Beck, in 1847, proposed the name of Tntonofusus for the elongated 
forms like C islandicus^ for which Morch, in 1852, attempted to revive 
the nonbinomial Sipho of Klein, which in binomial nomenclature was 
already utilized hj Brown. In 1858 Valenciennes proposed to sub- 
stitute for Tritonuim Miiller, as applied to these forms, the name 
Ti'itonelliurn., which is superfluous. 
For another group of this subfamily Gra}^ in 1857 (January), pro- 
posed the name Stromhella with a diagnosis. Strombella, as a nude 
catalogue name, had been published b}'- Schlueter, in 1838, covering a 
number of species of Stromhus like -6'. pugilh, which are of smaller 
size than those he regarded as typical. I have regarded this name as 
not having entered into nomenclature, and therefore not preventing 
the adoption of Gray's genus; but the present u.sage .seems to be adverse 
to this view, and therefore I now revert to the name Volutopsius of 
Morch of nearly even date, but which (emended to Volutopsis) was 
adopted b}' G- O. Sars in 1878 and properl}^ defined. The synonymy 
of this genus is as follows: 
Genus VOLUTOPSIUS Morch. 
StrombeUa Gray, Guide Moll. Brit. Mus., 1857, p. 13 (January, type, Fusus nor- 
vegicus Chemnitz), not of Schluter, System. Conchyliensamml., 1838, p. 22. 
Volutopsius Morch, Fort. ov. Gronl. Bloddyr, April, 1857, p. 13, and Arctic 
Manual, 1875, p. 129 (same type). 
Volutopsis Dall, Proc. Cal. Acad. Sci., V, 1873, p. 57— G. O. Sars, Moll. Reg. 
Arct. Norv., 1878, p. 268. 
