LIMA. 263 



white. The majority of known living species come from 

 the South Seas and Indian Ocean. 



A sub-genus Limatula has been proposed by Mr. 

 Searles Wood for those species which are nearly equilat- 

 eral. Neither their shells nor animals materially differ 

 from their more oblique congeners. 



L. subauriculata, Montagu. 



Valves much swollen, nearly equilateral ; neither oblique nor 

 gaping. 



Plate LIU. fig. 4, 5. 



Pcctcn subauriculatus, Mont. Test. Brit. Suppl. p. 63, pi. 29, f. 2. — Fleming, 



Encyclop. Edin. pi. 205, f. 12. 

 Ostrea subauriculata, Turt. Conch. Diction, p. 131. — Index Testaceolog. Suppl. 



pi. 2, Ostrea, f. 5. 

 Lima subauriculata, Turt. Dithyra Brit. p. 218. — Fleming, Brit. Animals, p. 

 388. — Brit. Marine Conch, p. 114. — Sowerby, Thesaur. 

 Conch, vol. i. p. 84, pi. 22, f. 23.— Philippi, Moll. Sicil. 

 vol. ii. p. 56. — Hanley, Recent Shells, vol. i. p. 266, 

 suppl. pi. 2, Ostrea, f. 5. — Lovkn, Index Moll. Skandinav. 

 p. 32. 

 „ nirea, Philippi, Moll. Sicil. vol. i. p. 78. 

 „ sulcata, Brown, Must. Conch. G. B. p. 74, pi. 23, f. 4, 5. — Moller, Moll. 



Groenlandise, p. 16. 

 „ sulculus, Loven, Index Moll. Skandinav. p. 32 ? 

 Limatula subauriculata, S. V. Wood, Mag. Nat. Hist, new series (Charles- 

 worth's), vol. iii. p. 236, pi. 3, f. 6 (fossil). 



At present this species, which bears a remarkable like- 

 ness to the bullata of Born, but differs as well by its 

 size, as by the much greater tenuity and number of its 

 costellse, which even in the earlier stages in that exotic 

 shell are manifestly coarse, and comparatively few, is by 

 far the rarest of our Lima, and, indeed, is one of our 

 scarcest bivalves. It is extremely tumid, almost equi- 

 lateral, and scarcely at all oblique, excessively fragile 



