368 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS [voL. 48 
Conchologia Iconica by Reeve in 1847, and the general accuracy of 
which, as compared with the Massena specimen, now in the Museum 
of Geneva, was confirmed by Kobelt in 1878, at the request of Dohrn. 
Up to Kiener’s time and for more than twenty years later the 
provenance of this species was unknown, but by the dredgings of 
the Blake several specimens were obtained in 34 to 168 fathoms off 
the eastern coast of the United States from North Carolina south 
to the Florida Keys and in the Gulf of Mexico. A young specimen, 
showing the nepionic shell and projecting spine, or calcarella, was 
figured by the writer in 1890, and the adult in 1902, from recent 
specimens, but Toumey and Holmes had given an excellent figure 
from a fossil specimen found in the Pliocene of South Carolina, 
under the name of Voluta mutabilis,in 1856. The true V. mutabilis 
is a very similar but more robust species not uncommon in the 
Miocene of the Carolinas. 
Mr. Sowerby, in 1903, expressed the opinion that the tessellatus 
of Schubert and the dubia of Broderip are distinct species. This 
Opinion is apparently based upon a supposed difference in the size 
of the nepionic shell. But Schubert’s species is based upon an 
anonymous drawing which may have been taken from a specimen 
in which the nepionic shell had been altered by the use of acid in 
cleaning, as is usual with dealers’ shells, and no specimen is known 
to exist. Moreover, in 1892, I showed? that while the form of this 
nepionic shell is quite constant, its actual size in different specimens 
differs widely. This is a well-known phenomenon in Prosobranchs, 
whose ovicapsules contain more than one embryo. And, in addi- 
tion to that, the name Voluta tessellata had been used by Lamarck 
as early as 1811, so that it is not available for Schubert’s shell. I 
have no doubt that Schubert’s figure was intended to represent an 
immature specimen of the species which two years earlier had been 
named dubia by Broderip, and of which an adult was figured by 
Kiener. In 1871 Dr. Dohrn obtained on the west coast of Florida 
some specimens of a volute which he referred to V. dubia, and of 
which three excellent figures by Kobelt were published, together 
with his notes upon the shells. In my Blake Mollusca (p. 151, 
1889) I accepted Dr. Dohrn’s identification, in the absence of any 
specimens of his species, but pointed out characters which did not 
agree with those of VY. dubia, especially the heavier shell and the 
presence of four plaits on the pillar instead of the obsolete two plaits 
in dubia. Up to the present month (December, 1905) I had never 
seen specimens of the shell figured by Dohrn. Mr. Sowerby had 
*Trans. Wagner Inst. Sct., 11, p. 227. 
