86 AMERICAN JOURNAL 



NOTES ON DR. JAMES LEWIS' PAPER, <' ON THE SHELLS 

 OF THE HOLSTON RIVER." 



(Published in Am. Jour. Conch., VI, Part III, 216, 1871.) 

 BY GEORGE W. TRYON, JR. 



I propose in the following few pages to review the synonymy 

 of the operculated fluviatile mollusks included in the paper above 

 quoted. It appears that Dr. Lewis has made use, principally, 

 of very abundant material, the result of two years' exploration 

 of about twenty miles of the course of the Holston River by an 

 intelligent and industrious collector — Miss Annie E. Law, of 

 Concord, E. Tenn. I have carefully examined a large number 

 of specimens from the same stream, collected many years since 

 by Prof. S. S. Haldeman, and I have otherwise enjoyed advan- 

 tages for the study of the Strepomatidce, such as have been af- 

 forded to no other naturalist. I had the entire collections of 

 Dr. Gould, Mr. C. M. Wheatley, Prof. Haldeman and Smith- 

 sonian Institution, Mr. J. G. Anthony's type specimens and 

 my own collection, with facilities of comparison with the collec- 

 tion of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and that of Dr. Isaac 

 Lea. The last named gentleman kindly gave me much of his 

 valuable time and experience in perfecting the synonymy of the 

 Strepomatidce, and when I published my paper I had attained a 

 very satisfactory knowledge of most of the species of this diffi- 

 cult family. I have since had but few occasions to doubt the 

 correctness of my published views. 



It will thus be seen that my conclusions, so different from 

 those arrived at by my friend Dr. Lewis, are based upon abun- 

 dant material, including specimens collected in the Holston. On 

 the other hand, Dr. Lewis uses his Holston collection as a basis 

 for his determinations, and however extensive it may be, I believe 

 that a merely local collection, in this family, is not well adapted 

 to the elucidation of questions of synonymy, especially as sev- 

 eral of the shells which are made synonyms were not originally 

 obtained or described from the Holston River, and as they are 

 not well understood species, it may be suspected with some 

 reason that their identification is apocryphal. 



