FREE INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE 



071 



TERTIARY FAUNA OF FLORIDA 



The difficulty of allotting the synonymy and fixing the names of the sub- 

 divisions of this family is greatly aggravated by the errors and uncertainties 

 of the earlier authors in regard to species, and by the excessive and obscure 

 subdivisions proposed by them, including Lamarck himself. To discuss the 

 whole subject would occupy too much space and time, and therefore I shall 

 content myself with stating the results of a long-continued and laborious in- 

 vestigation of perhaps as confused a lot of nomenclature as exists in the 

 literature of the subject. 



Hiatula Modeer, 1793. 



The name Hiatula is an ancient synonym of Mya Linne, indicating the 

 gaping species, and is so cited by Schroeter as early as 1784. It was revived 

 by Modeer for a group containing Mya arenaria and truncata, Saxicava, and 

 Sanguinolaria diphos. He used Mya for the group named Unio by Retzius 

 some years earlier. Hiatula should therefore be regarded as a synonym of 

 the heterogeneous Mya of Linne, and the use of the name is barred by its 

 previous synonymic character, as pointed out by Fischer. 

 Asaphis Modeer, 1793. 



This genus is founded upon a single type, the Venus defforata of Linne, 

 and is generally accepted. The synonyms include Capsa (sp.) of Bruguiere, 

 1792; Capsa Lamarck, 1801, but not of 1799 or 1818; Corbula (sp.) Bolten, 

 1798, not of Bruguiere, 1792; Psammocola (pars) Blainville, 1824; Capsula 

 Schumacher, 1817; Sanguinolaria Deshayes, 1835, not f Lamarck, 1799; 

 Pliorhytis Conrad, 1863, and probably Hetcroglypta von Martens, 1880. The 

 last-mentioned will probably form a distinct section by itself, as restricted to 

 its typical species, though its author intended to include all the diversely sculp- 

 tured Psammobias. 



Capsa (Bruguiere, 1797) Lamarck, 1799. 



Lamarck selected as an example of the "genus Capsa in 1799 the Tellina 

 angulata of Linne. This Morch identifies (J. de C, vii., p. 134, 1858) with 

 figure i of Bruguiere's plate 231. But Lamarck does not refer to that plate, 

 his diagnosis is not distinctive, and Hanley identifies the T. angulata of Linne, 

 not with the Gastraua figured by Bruguiere, but with the Tellina (Arcopagia) 

 plicata Valenciennes, of which a specimen still remains in the Linnrean cabinet. 

 Owing to this fact and the extraordinary confusion which has always attended 

 this generic name, it would best be dropped altogether, especially as its original 

 status merely depends on a name at the head of a plate of heterogeneous un- 

 named bivalves. 



