206 Prof. A. E. Verrill on the Mollusca 



aequoreum" may refer to the gregarious habits of that fish; 

 " mitis Bala3na" is equally applicable to the mild and in- 

 offensive sturgeon, while the " agmina defensa corporis " seem 

 to allude to the bony plates on that fish's body. There are, 

 it is true, other classical designations for the sturgeon more 

 generally used, such as acipenser and helops ; but in this 

 passage of Ausonius, silurus certainly stands for that fish. 

 Whether sturgeons are now found in the Moselle I am unable 

 to say. 



The flesh of the silurus formed part of the ancient pharma- 

 copoeia. Dioscorides (Mat. Med. ii. 29) says that in a fresh 

 state it is nourisliing and good for the bowels ; but when salted 

 it has no nutriment, though it is good for clearing the bronchial 

 tubes and for the voice ; used as a poultice it draws out thorns, 

 while the brine from it is good in early stages of dysentery. 



XXIII. — Bemarhs on certain Errors in Mr. Jeffreys' s Article 

 on '"''The Mollusca of Europe compared loitli those of Eastern 

 North Americay By A. E. Verrill, Professor of Zoology 

 in Yale College, New Haven, Conn., U. S. A. 



In the October number of the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural 

 History' Mr. Jeffreys published an article upon this interesting 

 subject, in which many important errors occur, due, no doubt, 

 to the fact that the distinguished author is much less familiar 

 with American than with European shells. But as the 

 dredgiugs in connexion with the investigations of our fisheries 

 by the U. S. Fish Commission were under my superintendence 

 during the two past seasons, and Mr. Jeffreys alludes to the 

 fact (tliough rather indefinitely) that he, by invitation of Pro- 

 fessor Baird, accompanied us on several dredging-excursions 

 in 1871, it seems necessary that I should point out some of the 

 more important of these errors, lest it be supposed by some 

 that the same views are held by me. 



It is not my intention to discuss at this time the numerical 

 results presented by Mr. Jeffreys ; but I would remind the 

 readers of his article that the regions compared are in no respect 

 similar or parallel, and that it is scarcely fair to compare the 

 shells from the entire coast of Europe with those from about 

 200 miles of the coast of New England, where the marine 

 climate is for tlie most part more arctic than that of the extreme 

 north of Scotland — and, moreover, that the last edition of 

 Gould's '■ Invertebrata of Massachusetts ' contains only a part 

 of the species added to our fauna since the first edition was 

 published in 1841, and very little of the great mass of facts 



