FAMILY TURBINIDA — MELANIA. 89 
GENUS MELANIA. Lamarck. 
Animal with a proboscis-like rostrum, semicylindrical, slightly notched in front; tentacles 
filiform ; foot oval and very large ; mantle festooned in front and on the left. Shell turreted, 
rather thick, and covered with an epidermis. Aperture acute, oblong, entire, effuse at 
the base. Lip simple, acute, prominent near the base, and rather abruptly retracted at 
its junction with the base of the columella, and not united above to the pillar-lip. Colu- 
mella smooth, incurved. No umbilicus. Opercle corneous, spiral. 
Oss. These animals are most numerous in Asia and America. In Europe they are only 
found in a fossil state. In this country, more than one hundred species have been described, 
almost exclusively from the Western and Southern States. In the first edition of Lamarck, 
(Animauz sans vertébres), among the sixteen living species described, only one is attributed 
to North-America. ‘The chief laborers in this genus are Messrs. Say, Conrad, and more 
especially Mr. Lea, who alone has added more than fifty species, all of which are beautifully 
figured in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. As the species are very 
numerous, Mr. Lea has arranged them under nine divisions, according as they are smooth, 
plicate, carinate, sulcate, striate, tuberculate, granulate, cancellate or rugose. 
MELANIA DEPYGIS, 
PLATE VII. FIG. 135. a. B. VARIETY. 
(STATE COLLECTION.) 
M. depygis. Say, Des, terr. & fluy. shells, p, 19; Am. Conch, pl. 8, figs. 4, 5. 
M. id. Apams, American Jour. Science, Vol. 40, p. 366. 
Description. Shell oblong, conic-ovate, not remarkably thickened. Spire longer than the 
aperture, often much eroded, with a broad revolving band near the suture, occupying more 
than half the surface. Whorls about five, hardly rounded, and in the adult nearly flat. 
Suture moderately impressed. Aperture ovate-acute above, moderately dilated. Lip not 
projecting near the base, nor arched near its junction: base regularly rounded. 
Color. Body-whorl rufous or yellowish, with two equidistant revolving rufous lines, of 
which the upper is broadest. 
Length, 0°5-—0°9; of aperture, 0°3-0°4. 
Var. a. Dark brown bands obsolete. 
Var. s. Large, with coarse folds on the body-whorl. 
I have received this species from the Brimstone springs west of Geneva, and it doubtless 
occurs in various other parts of the State. The whorls of these are of a dark horn-color, 
and the sutures whitish, often entirely covered with a calcareous coating. Prof. Adams 
detected it in Lake Champlain, and remarks that it is the only species yet observed in the 
States east of the Hudson river. 
Fauna — Parr 6. 12 
