128 BULLETIN OF THE 



and his varietal name will have precedence, since the shell is not the Taranis 

 Morchii as we supposed. See under the head of Taranis cirrata Brugnone, 

 immediately following. 



Subgenus TARANIS Jeffreys. 



Taranis cirrata Brugnone. 



Pleurotoma cirratum Brugnone, Mem. Pleur. Fos., p. 17, fig. 9, 1862. 



Trophon Morchii Malm, Gotheborgs Vet. SammL Handl., 18G3, p. 130, pi. ii. fig. 15, 



1863. 

 Bela demersa Tiben, Journ. de Conchyl., XVI. p. 179, 1868. 

 Taranis Morchii Jeffreys, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., V. p. 10, 1870. 

 Taranis cirrata Monterosato, En. e Sin. Med., p. 41. 



Habitat. U. S. Fish Commission Station 2602, in 124 fms., sand, oflf Cape 

 Hatteras, N. C. Also off Fowey Rocks, Straits of Florida, in 150-200 fms., 

 Dr. Rush. 



This is not the shell referred to under the name of Taranis Morchii in my 

 Preliminary Report. Nor is it the shell called Taranis Morchii by Prof. Verrill 

 in Trans. Conn. Acad., V. pp. 486, 487, 1882. 



I have carefully studied the types of the genuine Taranis in the Jeffreys 

 collection, including original types of Jeffreys, Brugnone, Tiberi, Malm, Monte- 

 rosato, etc. They all belong to one species, characterized among other things 

 by a swollen smooth white bulbous nucleus of about two whorls, which 

 when the shell is young and thin sometimes shows brownish from the con- 

 tained animal matter. It recalls the nucleus of some species of Sipho, which 

 was doubtless the reason Malm referred it to Trophon. 



As I have not seen Prof. Verrill's types, I cannot say whether his specimens 

 are all of one species, but presume they are, and in their characters they agree 

 very well with the single specimen dredged by the Blake, which has the usual 

 brown Simisigera luicleus of so many Pleur otomidcB. It has very much the 

 sculpture of T. cirrata or Morchii, but the transverse sculpture is as strong as 

 the spirals and tends to become prickly at the intersections. A variety of this 

 form with the spiral sculpture predominant is the Taranis Morchii var. tornatus 

 of Verrill, Trans. Conn. Acad., VI. p. 251, 1884. Both of these probably 

 belong to Mangilia, somewhere in the vicinity of Pleurotomclla or Gymnohela^ 

 and the former is referred to above as P^ewroiome^Za (G'2/mno&e?a ?) tornata var. 

 Malmii Ball. 



The name of cirratum given by Brugnone to this species is not preoccupied 

 by Pleurotoma cirrata of Bellardi, as the latter is a genuine Pleurotoma and 

 not a Mangilia. As it is a year older than Malm's name, I follow Monte- 

 rosato in giving it precedence. The brown color of the nucleus of his Bela 

 demersa, referred to by Tiberi, is, according to his specimen in the Jeffreys 

 collection, an accidental tincture due to a deposit of extraneous matter, per- 

 haps iron oxide. 



February 16, 1889. 



