133 PALEONTOLOGY OF NEW JERSEY. 
Meek states does not exist in his shell, P. Nebracensis, wpon which the 
genus was founded. There is no other existing genus into which it seems 
to fit as well as in Doliwm. 
Formation and locality: In a hard, blackish-green pyritous marl of the 
Lower Marl Beds at Freehold, New Jersey. Collection at Rutgers College. 
Genus FICUS Rosseau. 
FICUS PRECEDENS, 0. sp. 
Plate xv, Figs. 7, 8. 
Shell small, pyriform; volutions about three, very ventricose, inflated 
in the upper part, rapidly attenuated below and contracted to form a mod- 
erately long, slender canal and beak, which is very slightly bent; spire low, 
but the inner volutions distinctly showing above the outer ones, with a well 
defined suture; aperture elongate-elliptical, prolonged below to the end of 
the canal, which is very narrow; surface of the shell marked by twelve 
principal prominent, spiral carina, between which there is in each space a 
single subordinate ridge showing on the cast; toward the lower part of the 
volution and on the beak they are more equal in size, and on the body of 
the volution the principal carina are nodose, or serrated, from the crossing 
of transverse ribs which pass across the volution in a nearly straight line 
parallel to the margin of the outer lip of the aperture. In a fragment of 
the matrix, from near the inner part of the outer whorl the principal spiral 
ridges are seen to be sharply carinate, and the transverse strize fine and 
numerous; columella without ridges or folds of any kind. 
The shell has had exactly the features of the recent forms of the genus 
Ficus (Pyrula pars) and the cast shows that the shell has been extremely 
thin and fragile, like the living ones of the genus, with a strongly reticu- 
lated surface (a part of the matrix of the spire shows it to be strongly can- 
cellated). The columella has not been thickened to any degree, the space 
left by the removal of the shell being very narrow and the outer surface of 
it smooth. There are two or three species of gasteropods in the New Jer- 
sey Cretaceous rocks, which may readily be confounded with this one if not 
carefully compared, especially Perisolax retifer (— Fusus retifer Gabb), but 
