DALL] REVIEW OF AMERICAN VOLUTID&. 345 
lation as regards the number of species may be inferred from the 
-remains in American Tertiaries, but these fossil species were nearly 
all of rather small size. Europe has lost still more, having only 
two or three species, including Volutomitra, remaining in her living 
fauna, of which none is a typical Volute. 
Family VOLUTIDAE 
Subfamily Votutinz Dall 
Genus VOLUTA (Linné) Lamarck 
Voluta (sp.) Linn, Syst. Nat., ed. x, p. 729, 1758; ed. x11, p. 1186, 1766. 
Musica, anonymous, Mus. Calonnianum, p. 18, 1797. 
Plejona Botten, Mus. Boltenianum, p. 39, 1798. 
Voluta Lamarck, Prodrome, p. 70, 1799; sole ex. V. musica. 
V olutarius Froriep’s trans. of Dumeril, Zool. Anal., p. 167, 1806. 
Harpula Swainson, Zool. Ill., 0, p. 77, 1832, type V. ebrea. 
Musica Morcu, Cat. Yoldi, p. 124, 1852. 
Chlorosina Gray, in Adams, Gen. Rec. Moll., 1, p. 617. 1858, sole ex. V. 
polyzonalis Lam.,=V. virescens Sol. 
Volutolyria CrossE, Journ de Conchyl., xxv, p. 99, 1877; Fischer, Man. 
de Conchyl., p. 610, 1884. 
Tropical and subtropical shores of the Atlantic, the Caribbean 
Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, at the present day; fossil, from the 
Eocene upward, in the Tertiaries of France, the Mediterranean 
and the Antillean region. 
The first representatives of this group occur in the Eocene and 
resemble more closely the recent Lyria than the fully evolved V oluta. 
These two genera are separated on anatomical characters which are 
inaccessible in the fossils, the shell characters alone being insufficient 
to separate the groups more than subgenerically. 
The Antillean region seems to have been their center of disper- 
sion. The inter-island distribution of the various forms is very 
imperfectly known but it is likely that the three species enumerated, 
if not all their varieties, occur over a certain portion of the West 
African coast as well as on the American shores. The elevation in 
the later Oligocene of the Central American connection between 
the continents of North and South America seems to have barred 
the later developed forms of typical Voluta from reaching the 
Pacific, where only a few small species, of the Lyria type, are known 
to: exist. 
The type of the genus is Voluta musica Linné. 
