BITTIUM. 321 



and along the coast of Maine. Complete shells are fonnd in fishes 

 taken at the Newfoundland Banks. JSable Island {Willis). Imper- 

 fect specimens occasionally on Nahant Beach (^Haskell) ; Eastport, 

 twenty fathoms, alive ( Cooper') ; Portland, Labrador, Sable Island 

 (Dawson) ; Bay of Fundy ( Willis) ; St. Anne {Bell) ; fossil of 

 Tertiary Bay, Labrador. 



It is a very extraordinary shell, resembling, in its expansion 

 without digitations, the fossil species macroplera, of which the ge- 

 nus Hippocrene has been formed. The animal is not known, but 

 from the alliance of the shell to the Aporrhais pes-pelecani it prob- 

 ably belongs to the same genus. As this cannot now be settled, it 

 is better to leave it still in the genus Mostellaria, from which the 

 pes-pelecani has been separated, on account of a difference in the 

 animal.* 



The lip is very remarkable, and very much resembles the lip of 

 Strombus tricornis. 



Genus BITTIU.II, (Leach) Gray. 1847. 



Shell turreted, many whorled, granular, often with irregular 

 varices ; aperture with a slight canal in front, not produced or re- 

 curved ; inner lip simple ; outer lip acute, not reflexed or expanded. 



Bittium nigrum. 



Fig. 183. 



Shell small, ashy or slate-colored, covered with a fine network of elevated 

 lines ; aperture rounded ; canal merely an oblique fissure. 



Cerithium reticidatum, Totten, Sillim. Journ. xxviii. 352, fig. 8. 



Pauthea m'rjra, Totten (the young), SilHrn. Journ. xxvi. 369, pi. 1, fig. 7. 



Cerithium Sai/i, Mexke ; Gould, Inv. 1st ed. 278, fig. 183. -De Kat, N. Y. Moll. 



128, pi. 8. fig. 167. — Stimpsox, Shells of New England, 37. 

 Bittium nigrum, Stimpsox, Check Lists, 5. 



Shell small, elongated-conical, somewhat turreted, the upper 

 whorls of a blue-black or slate color, and two or three of the lower 

 ones usually much lighter, white, or ash gray ; whorls six or eight, 

 forming an elevated conical spire ; surface covered with a granular 

 network from the crossing of slightly elevated, rounded folds or 

 ribs, and elevated spiral lines ; of the ribs there are about twenty, 

 which vanish on the lower half of the anterior whorl ; of the spiral 



* It is now universally removed from Rostellaria. — W. G. B. 

 21 



