NO. 2 PYRAMIDELLID MOLLUSKS — BARTSCH 5 



groups as genera, and thereby enticed students to undertake a study 

 of pyramidellids. 



This ultraconservative attitude of ours would seem to have been 

 at that time, or even today, of little importance. Additional studies 

 of material from many parts of the world made it necessary to make 

 an exhaustive study of the literature and prepare a card catalog of 

 all described species in order to discover all the names that had been 

 used in the past so as to prevent us from creating homonyms and 

 synonyms. This study produced startling results. First of all, it 

 revealed that several thousand species had been described in this 

 family, a fact probably responsible for scaring off modern research 

 men in systematic zoology and paleontology. These are the chief 

 underlying facts, I believe, that have left the members of this family 

 practically a virgin field in East America, in not only the Recent but 

 also the Tertiary faunas. How absolutely necessary such a catalog 

 as the one in our possession is, is demonstrated by the name Turbonilla 

 elegans, which has been applied by different authors to no less than 

 17 distinct species. Sixteen of these have to be discarded as 

 homonyms. 



Since it is my belief that it will be easier for students to become 

 acquainted with the members of smaller genera, I shall herein elevate 

 some of the subgenera used by Dall and Bartsch to generic rank. 



Special attention is called to the introduction to pseudogenus 

 Striopyrgus, which discusses hybridization among pyramidellids and 

 other mollusks, page 53. 



The types of the new species and the first series of duplicates have 

 been donated by the collectors to the United States National Museum 

 and bear the U.S.N.M. catalog numbers on the labels and in our regis- 

 ter. The remaining duplicates have been sent to the Academy of 

 Natural Sciences of Philadelphia for intercalation in the Fargo- 

 Locklin collection. 



Acknowledgments. — I am not only indebted to the Fargo-Locklin 

 partnership for the opportunity of working up this splendid collection 

 of pyramidellids that they have extracted by many years of effort 

 from the Pliocene deposits of North St. Petersburg, Fla., but also 

 for funds to cover the making of detailed sketches where they were 

 found desirable and the translation of my penciled manuscript into 

 typed form. 



The Photographic Laboratory of the Smithsonian Institution de- 

 serves credit for the making of the greatly enlarged photographs, 

 which are reproduced unretouched. 



