THE NAUTILUS. 95. 



Vallonia in Chicago. — Eleventh month, eleventh day, li)ll. 

 Funny date, fufiny day! Thermometer standing at 72°, wind at 40 

 miles per hour. Thought I must do something unusual, so at 9 a. m. 

 took my little tin tobacco box and walked to 63d and Prairie Ave., 

 near wliere the South Side Elevated goes round the bend, and 

 looked for Vallonias. About a montli ago I captured 1782 in two 

 hours. To-day I returned in an hour, and must have four or five 

 times as many. It may not be news, but they reminded me of white 

 ants, the way they " bored into " the decaying sticks and wood, 



I think this is a " record " for collecting so many near the heart 

 of a great city. If any one wishes samples lei him speak out — E. E. 

 Hand, Wendell Phillips High School, Chicago, 111. 



On the Type ok Conoeria The genus Congeria Partsch was 



proposed for four new species of the Hungarian miocene, C. suhglo- 

 bosa, C. triangularis, C. halatonica and G. spathulatn. No type was 

 selected, and so far as I can learn none has been expressly selected 

 by any subsequent author. Professor Karl von Zittel, in his well- 

 known Handbuch der Palaontologie, figured C. subglobosa, and that 

 only as an example of the genus (Vol. I, p. 43, fig. 56), but by some 

 error, such as may overtake even the most careful naturalists, he 

 wrote the name *■'■ Dreissensia ( Congeria) conglobata Partsch." This 

 error was perpetuated by Dr. Paul Fischer (Manual de Conchyl., p. 

 973). The same species is mentioned and figured in the English 

 translation of Zittel's Text-book of Palaeontology, I, p. 387, fig. 685 

 (1896), and here the name under the figures is correctly given, sub- 

 globosa Partsch, The general use of this species as an exam[)le of 

 Congeria renders it expedient to select it as type. Congeria subglo- 

 bosa Partsch is therefore the type of Congeria. 



C. subglobosa is very aberrant for a mytilaceous bivalve, being 

 thick, rounded-quadrate, with somewhat the general contour of the 

 deep valve of Exogyra. Dr. Dall, to whose work on Pelecypods we 

 naturally turn for such information, considers our American Dreis- 

 senids to belong to Congeria rather tiian to Dreissena, the common 

 European genus, which he shows to be generically different (Ter- 

 tiary Fauna of Florida, p. 808). It must be admitted, however, 

 that the American forms by their shape and thinness differ a good 

 deal from the type of Congeria, so that the group Mytilopsis Conrad 



