THE NAUTILUS. 45 
call them varieties or ‘“ subspecies,” endeavoring in this way to 
dodge a dangerous breaker ? 
As the humblest student of these beautiful and variable forms of 
molluscan life, I shall not cease, upon every opportunity, to enter 
vigorous protest against these inversions of the natural order in 
development. 
As there are no such things in nature as subspecific or varietal 
barriers, so there should be none in the literature devoted to her 
record. 
Here may the educated finer sense, the critical insight, the intense 
love of truth, the most unbounded capacity for labor, the acumen 
derived from the union and cultivation of all these, find wholesome 
employment and scope for all legitimate ambitions. 
This is better than erecting obstructions in this highway of the 
omnipotent, that must crumble of their own inherent falsity. 
Magnetic City, N. C. 
ON CHITON HARTWEGII CPR. AND ITS ALLIES. 
BY H. A. PHESBRY. 
In the “ Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London” for 
1855, Dr. P. P. Carpenter described a number of West American 
Chitons, now mostly well-known to western naturalists, among them 
C. Hartwegit and C. Nuttalli. The descriptions though concise are 
excellently worded, leaving no doubt of the exact forms intended ; 
for Carpenter was an adept in the art of writing diagnoses. In his 
later publications on the shells of this fauna, the systematic position 
of these species caused Carpenter some trouble; for he refers them 
to both Trachydermon and Chetopleura ; and the difficulty of plac- 
ing them in either of these genera caused the present writer to 
make anew group, CyYANOPLAX (in allusion to the color of the 
interior), to contain them. There cannot be much doubt that 
Cyanoplax is a subgenus of the Carpenterian genus TRACHYDER- 
Mon. The species Hartwegii was founded upon specimens collected 
at Monterey by Hartweg (whom Carpenter is pleased to call 
“ diligentissimus”). The type measured about 31x19 mm. (1°26x°76 
