THE NAUTILUS. 123 



the lake. But the differences are so slight that they do not 

 warrant distinction even as a sub-species. 



I believe it was this stream form that Anthony had before 

 him when he described his Melania negleda^^ from the Great 

 Miami river, " near Dayton, Ohio." The descriptions of .siibu- 

 laris and negleda might be interchanged and cause little or no 

 perplexity to the student. In September, 1916, I collected in 

 the Great Miami at Tadmor, about ten miles north of Dayton, 

 and in January last, collected over exposed gravel bars of the 

 river at Dayton itself. Save that there seem to be an unusual 

 number of distorted specimens among these shells, I cannot see 

 any marked differences between them, and recognized subulare 

 of the lake drainage. Anthony mentioned two varieties, one 

 banded, the other "plain, horn-color, or with bands but faintly 

 indicated by an almost imperceptible difference of color in the 

 interior of the mouth." Heavy specimens of this latter variety, 

 with "remarkably expanded outer lip," were separated by Lea 

 under the name Trypanostoma labiatum.* In the Tadmor lot, I 

 have specimens running from thin attenuated forms to the ro- 

 bust labiatum of expanded lip, banded and unhanded, all of the 

 same colony. In a family so variable as the Pleuroceridae, 

 there can be little justification for Lea's action, if only because 

 the dignifying of one form with a name makes it a duty to 

 name the other forms — a business that would pile up the no- 

 menclature like ore-heaps around a blast furnace. 



Melania iniensa Anthony ' is simply a "purple-black " variety 

 of subulare. Such shells occur more or less commonly in local- 

 ities where subulare flourishes. I collected nearly a handful in 

 the Wabash river at Logansport, Ind., last j'ear. One can get 

 black and partly black shells. In a sending by A. J. Brown 

 from Spring river, Fulton county, Ark., was a specimen black 

 from apex to a little beyond the beginning of the last whorl. 

 At that point the animal seems to have run out of coloring 

 matter, finishing the shell in pale yellow. 



'Ann. Lye. N. Y., p. 128 ; March, 1854. 

 'Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci., p. 174; 1862. 

 'Reeve, Monog., sp. 371. 



