128 THE NAUTILUS. 



muscles were scarcely ever present in the fragments. Indeed, in 

 only a single bivalve had the posterior adductor been torn loose. 

 The Unionida' were usually large and thin — probably in most cases 

 Anodonta. 



" I have been repeatedly assured by fishermen that the cat-fish seizes 

 the foot of the niollusk while the latter is extended from the shell, 

 and tears the animal loose by vigorously jerking and rubbing it 

 about. One intelligent fisherman informed me that he was often 

 first notified of the presence of cat-fish in his seine, in making a 

 haul, by seeing the fragments of clams floating on the surface, dis- 

 gorged by the struggling captives." 



" Still more interesting and curious was the fact that the univalve 

 Mollusca found in the stomachs of these fishes were almost invari- 

 ably naked, the more or less mutilated bodies having only the oper- 

 cles attached. How these fishes manage to separate mollusks like 

 Melaniho and Vivlpara from the shell, I am scarcely able to imag- 

 ine, unless they have the power to crack the shells in their jaws as 

 a boy would nuts, and then pick out the body afterward. Certainly 

 the shells are not swalloAved, either whole or broken. 



" The number of Mollusks sometimes taken by a single cat-fish is 

 surprising. As high as one hundred and twenty bodies and opercles 

 of Mekmtho and Vivipara were counted in a spotted cat-fish taken 

 at Havana in September of last year." 



PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED. 



Tertiary Mollusks of Florida, by AV. H. Dall. Part IT. 

 On the Marine Pliocene Beds of the Carolinas. (Trans. Wagner 

 Institute, 1892.) In connection with his studies of the Calousa- 

 hatchie Pliocene fauna, Dr. Dall found it necessary to consider the 

 other east American faunas supposed to be of the same age. The 

 area Avhere Pliocene might be expected to occur is bounded on the 

 north by part of Virginia, and extends southward along the coast to 

 South Florida. In his studies of the Carolinian fauna, which 

 Heilprin has called " Carolinian or Upper Atlantic Miocene," Dr. 

 Dall was "forced to the conclusion that the fauna catalogued and 

 illustrated by Tuomey and Holmes in their ' Pleiocene Fossils of 

 South Carolina' was not a true fauna at all, but a confusion of 

 several distinct fimnas, of which one was of true Miocene age, like 



