194 KELLIIDjE. 



that the shell gapes. It can be completely closed on all 

 sides at the will of the animal. A species (L. loripes), 

 half an inch long, found on the coast of Florida has 

 a singular habitat. According to Mr. Stimpson, the 

 discoverer, " it lives in sand or mud, on the flats, near 

 low-water mark, at the depth of a foot below the surface, 

 and generally occupies the holes of marine worms and 

 fossorial Crustacea." This might warrant a supposition 

 that the animal of Lepton is predacious. 



Three species of Lepton are enumerated in Dr. Philip 

 Carpenter' s list of mollusca from the west coast of 

 North America. The genus Scintilla of Deshayes ap- 

 pears to be closely allied to the present genus. 



A. Shell pit-marked. 



(5-W-o 

 |pA.. i v * 1. LEPTON SQUAMO'SUM *, (Montagu^ N'. 133 



Solen squamosus, Mont. Test. Brit. i. p. 565. L. squamosum, F. & H. ii. 

 p. 98, pi. xxxvi. f. 8, 9, and (animal) pi. O. f. 6. 



BODY clear white : mantle very large, having its margins 

 flexuous and often puckered into two or three folds; the 

 margins extend considerably beyond the shell, and from them 

 springs, on each side of the ventral range in the middle, a row 

 of 25 rather long, slender and pointed milk-white tentacular 

 filaments ; the pallial margin has also at its sides 40 long, 

 strong, close-set, blunt, frosty-white cirri of different lengths, 

 one of these last filaments being much larger and longer than 

 the others, and resembling one of the tentacles of a Grastero- 

 pod : excurrent tube short : foot bluish-white, and transparent, 

 with a broad streak of intense snow-white running down the 

 middle, and a still more conspicuous flake at the anterior end ; 

 it is fixed to the centre of the body by a moderately long 

 pedicle. (Clark.) 



SHELL roundish-oval, with a tendency to a square outline 

 in consequence of the front margin being nearly straight and 

 of the hinge-line being unusually broad; it is very much 



* Scaly. 



