JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 93 
to move rapidly through the water by opening and shutting the 
valves, and have been known to spring sometimes a foot above 
water. 
THE MUSSEL. 
This Mollusc also moors itself by means of a byssus, like 
the Pinna. Inthe Old Country large quantities, it is stated, 
are consumed, especially in Scotland, in addition to the many 
thousands used in the fisheries. The type is not the dark blue 
species, the one we find at both sides of the Atlantic—MWytilus 
edulis—but the bright green one of its genus named by Chem- 
nitz Mytilus Samaragdinus of the Indian seas. The Mussels at 
Anticosti are exceedingly numerous and unusually large. This 
no doubt, is owing to the fishermen not using them as bait or 
for other purposes. The writer brought merely a few of the 
living ones, but the specimens fossilized in the Leda Clay sent 
to the Redpath Museum, were rightly considered identical with 
the European species by Sir W. Dawson. We are unable to 
offer any satistactory explanation regarding the change in the 
color of Wytilus Edulis from deep. blue to mauve. Occasionally 
perhaps, it occurs only in dead shells and not in living ones. 
The writer never noticed it in the latter, either in the Old 
Country or at Anticosti. Among the fine collection presented by 
Mrs. Beasley to the Museum, you may notice an example The 
change of color is not referred to as far as | know in any Con- 
chological work, and the generally accepted view regarding 
Mollusc coloring, viz., decomposition of light, etc., can hardly 
be quite satisfactory, since recent expeditions revealed such un- 
expected results as deep sea dredging brought to light. How- 
ever, the matter seems more in the line of the chemist than 
Conchologist or Palzontologist. The MZodzola or Horse Mussel 
differs from Myflus in being inflated anteriorly. Woodward 
states it is distinguished also by its habit of burrowing or spin- 
ing anest. I have frequently found the latter in rock cavities 
at Anticosti. It may be when young it drifted into a hole left 
by some other stone borer, but another member of the family, 
a sub-genera, Lzthodomas, the Date Shell of South Europe, cer- 
