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667 

 TERTIARY FAUNA OF FLORIDA 



2. MnlL'tia Fischer. 



Shell ribbed, with a strong posterior wing. Type Mclina Mnllcti Deshayes. 



The typical J\Iclina is mytiliform, compressed, and without auriculation, 

 or, at least, with no differentiated wing; the acute anterior beak in the young 

 becomes obscure in the adult. 



The genus in America seems to have been confined to temperate waters 

 during the earlier Miocene, though the recent species are subtropical. One 

 fossil Mclina is reported from the Gulf tertiaries in the lowest Eocene. 



Melina maxillata (Deshayes). 

 /',->->iit iiin.vif/iiltt Lam., An. s. Vert., vi., i., p. 142 (syn. excl.), 1819; eel. Deshayes, vii., 



p. 78, 1836. 

 r,rn<t /a?-/,! Say, Am. Jouni. Sci., ii., p. 38, 1820; not of Gmelin (Osfri'ii), Syst. Nat., p. 



3339, 1792. 



l\-rna inaxillala Conrad, Mod. 'Pert., p. 52, pi. xxvii., fig. I, 1840. 

 I'l-rna Conriuii Orbigny, IVodr., iii., p. 127. 



/sii^nniiidii fi'iiii Conr., Cat. Mio. Fos., Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. for 1862, p. 579, 1863. 

 Mcliiiti !<>iiti Mock, Smithsonian Checkl. Mio. Fos., p. 6. 

 /'//in /t'/'/ii Whitficld, Crust. Moll. Mio. N. J., p. 36, pi. 5, figs. 12-13, 1895. 



Lower Miocene of New Jersey at Shiloh and Jericho ; of Maryland near 

 Kaston, Leonardstown, and on the Patuxcnt ; Burns and Palmer. 



The National Museum has an internal cast which measures twenty-seven 

 centimetres in length, the shell of which could hardly have been less than 

 fifteen inches long. Remarkably perfect specimens of this almost invariably 

 imperfect shell were collected by Mr. W. Palmer at Leonardstown. 



The identity of the American shell described by Lamarck shortly before 

 Say with the Pcrna Soldani Dcsh. of the Italian tertiaries (figured by Knorr, 

 Sowerby [as inaxillata\ in his Genera, Goldfuss ct al.) has been disputed. 



They are certainly very similar, but in any case Lamarck says his shell 

 came from Virginia, and the specific name torta had been previously applied 

 by Gmelin to a variety of fifc/ina mytiloidcs Gmelin, so that it was unavailable 

 for use a second time by Say. It seems that Collini in his Voy. Min. (p. 10, 

 pi. I, fig. i), printed at Mannheim in 1776, had named the European shell 

 Qstreum polyleptoginglymnm ; but, as I have not seen the work, I cannot say 

 whether the binomial system of nomenclature is used in it or not. It is most 

 convenient at present to regard the American as distinct from the European 

 shell. Orbigny, regarding the European form as the true maxillata, renamed 

 the American shell P. Conradi. 



