124 MYTILID.E. 



localities given by Linne, on the authority of his pupil 

 Zoega, is Iceland (where M. marmorata has not since 

 been found), it may be on the whole better to confine 

 the specific name of discors to the other species. Leach 

 was, I believe, the first to call in question the identity 

 of M. marmorata with the Mytilus discors of Linne. 

 In his monograph of the genus Modiola, published in 

 the ( Zoological Miscellany ' (vol. ii. p. 56), he says, as 

 to the species in one section, " Montagu described two 

 species as natives of Great Britain : one he named M. 

 discors (but I am by no means satisfied that it is the 

 discors of Linne) j the other, which is a very distinct 

 species, discrepans.^ The change of name afterwards 

 proposed by Forbes was not effected without much 

 opposition. Philippi called it Poliana, in the Supple- 

 plement to his work on the Sicilian Mollusca, in the 

 ' Zeitschrift fur Malakozoologie ' for June 1844; Hanley 

 substituted another name (tumida), in his Appendix to 

 Wood's ( Index Testaceologicus '; and D'Orbigny after- 

 wards added a fourth, viz. Europcea. Lamarck had 

 described it in 1819 as Modiola discrepans. If the 

 Linnean collection of shells had been preserved intact, 

 instead of being so often and so carelessly disarranged and 

 rearranged by Sir James Smith's pupils and various 

 other persons, it might have helped to explain some of 

 the short and doubtful descriptions contained in the 

 f Sy sterna Naturse ' and other works of the great Cory- 

 phaeus of northern naturalists, and would have pre- 

 vented much of the confusion which has prevailed with 

 regard to the species above alluded to. Even the num- 

 bers marked on some of the specimens, with reference 

 to those works, cannot be identified with the handwriting 

 of Linne ; and it is extremely rare to find a case where 

 the name has been so inscribed. 



