CIRCE. 321 



by the trivial name of the " brown circular-furrowed 

 northern Cockle." Fleming justly remarked that this 

 descriptive epithet " seems somewhat different from the 

 usual provincial appellations." Lamarck has given an- 

 other equally extraordinary habitat for this species, viz. 

 " Cotes de France, a Cherbourg." 



Genus IV. CIRCE *, Schumacher. PL VI. f. 4. 



Body suborbicular, compressed : mantle rather thick ; edges 

 denticulated : tubes very short ; the larger or incurrent one 

 bag- shaped, and the other sessile and scarcely visible outside 

 the shell ; orifices fringed ; foot proportionally large. 



Shell rounded or triangular, compressed, concentrically 

 but slightly furrowed : epidermis thin : beaks prominent, not 

 much recurved: lunule distinct, lanceolate: corselet narrow: 

 ligament partly external and partly concealed within the corse- 

 let : teeth, in each valve three diverging cardinals, the outer 

 one on the posterior side in the left valve cloven lengthwise, 

 so as to resemble two ; laterals, one on the anterior side in the 

 right valve, and two on the same side in the left valve : scars 

 inconspicuous. 



The genus Circe was constituted by Schumacher in 

 his 'Essai d'un nouveau systeme des habitations des 

 vers testaceV ; and the diagnosis and further descrip- 

 tion which he gave are so explicit, that I have no doubt 

 it would include the British shell described by Mon- 

 tagu as Venus minima, and its variety ( V. triangularis of 

 the same author), and placed by subsequent writers in 

 the genera Cytherea and Cyprina. The deceased Pro- 

 fessor C. B. Adams (whose memory is deservedly che- 

 rished by his brother naturalists in the United States 

 as an assiduous conchologist) proposed another genus, 

 having similar characters, with the name of Gouldia, in 

 honour of his equally distinguished fellow-countryman ; 



* A Sea-Nymph and noted sorceress. 



p 5 



