1299 



Willcox; living on the coast of America and the West Indies from Cape 

 Hatteras, North Carolina, to Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in ten to one hundred 

 and twenty-four fathoms, United States Fish Commission. 



The typical Calvert Cliffs specimens when compared with well-grown regu- 

 lar specimens of the recent shell certainly look very different, and Conrad was 

 hardly blameworthy for separating them, but having a very large series, both 

 recent and fossil, and having compared them with a prepossession towards 

 the opinion that they are distinct, I have been compelled to decide that no line 

 can be drawn, and some of the recent shells cannot be distinguished by any 

 diagnostic characters from those from the lower Miocene. 



Section Timoclea Brown. 

 Chione (Timoclea) grus Holmes. 



Tapes grus Holmes, Post-Pi. Fos. S. Car., p. 37, pi. vii., fig. 5, 1858. 



Venus parva Sowerby, Thes. Conch., ii., p. 787, pi. clxviii., figs. 227-228, 1854 (not of 



Sowerby, 1829, nor of Miinster, 1836). 



Venus trapezoidalis Kurtz, Cat. Sh. N. and S. Car., p. 5, 1860. 

 Chione parva Romer, Mai. Blatt, xiv., p. 60, 1867. 



fVenus antillarum Orbigny, Mai. Cubana, ii., p. 278, pi. xxvi., figs. 41-43, 1853. 

 Venus pygmasa Ball (ex parted Bull. U. S. Nat. Mus. No. 37, p. 54, 1889. 



Miocene of North Carolina at the Natural Well and Magnolia, Duplin 

 County ; of Florida at Jackson Bluff , Ocklockonnee River, Vaughan ; Pliocene 

 of the Caloosahatchie and Shell Creek, Florida, Dall and Burns ; Pleistocene 

 of Simmons Bluff, South Carolina, Holmes ; living from Cape Hatteras, North 

 Carolina, to Yucatan in twelve to sixty-three fathoms, United States Fish 

 Commission. 



This modest little shell I believe to be the Venus antillarum of Orbigny, 

 who reports it as living from Florida to Martinique, but his description is so 

 brief and his figure so different that I prefer to use a later name about which 

 there can be no question as to its identity in the absence of authentic specimens 

 of Orbigny's shell. For many years it was confounded with Venus pygm&a 

 Lamarck, which is a near relative, and that confusion was carried into my list 

 of 1889. Venus pygmaa occurs among the Florida reefs, but I have seen noth- 

 ing of it from farther north. 



A species of Timoclea recalling C. (7\) granulata Gmelin occurs in the 

 Oligocene of an island in Lake Henriquillo, St. Domingo, but my specimen is 

 too much crushed to base a new species upon. 



