162 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



fauna. Mr. T. H. Aldrich has sent some acceptable specimens of marine 

 shells from the Mauritius and some named Eocene fossils. Lieut, J. F. 

 Moser, U. S. Navy, sent from the coast of .Florida some very interest- 

 ing shells in alcohol, and Mr. Henry Hemphill a most interesting series 

 of varieties of the limpets of the southern California coast. 



Dr. W. H. Rush submitted dredgings from deep water on the Florid- 

 ian coast to be named, and presented a very valuable series of them to 

 the Museum. We received in exchange a series of shells of South Africa 

 from the Albany Museum at Grahamstown, Cape Colony, put up by 

 the curator, Miss Mary Glanville. While awaiting instructions for 

 shipping the material to be sent in return we were shocked to receive 

 news of the death of this gifted and enthusiastic young woman, to whom, 

 according to South African papers, the cause of science in that country 

 and the Albany Museum in particular were greatly indebted. We owe 

 to Mrs. J. H. Everette, of Virginia, a remarkable collection of some 

 seventy-live pearls taken from a single individual of Ostrea virginica 

 Gmelin. Besides some fresh-water shells from Iowa the Museum re- 

 ceived from Mr. B. Ellsworth Call specimens of a singular parasite of 

 the land shell Succinea obliqua. This parasite Leucooliloridium ameri- 

 canmn is a new species of a genus hitherto unknown to North America, 

 and first characterized from a single species infesting Succinea in France. 

 The French species is described by Oarusand figured in the Journal de 

 Conchyliologie (vol. xxvii, pi. x, fig. 6) for 1879. It is the larva of 

 Distoma macrostoma Zeller, and develops in the intestines of thrushes, 

 nightingales, and other birds which eat the Succinea, It is long and 

 slender and of a pale apple-green with blackish maculations near the 

 larger end. The American species is larger, proportionally stouter, and 

 of a rusty brown where the European species is green. It is highly 

 probable that if the naturalists of Iowa examine the intestines of the 

 robin or other coarse-feeding singing birds of that State they will find 

 the fully developed Distoma corresponding to this species. 



The quality of the accessions in general has been good, only ten of 

 the fifty-two proving valueless to the Museum. 



The routine work of the year has largely been spent on the general 

 series of exotic mollusca, of which a large proportion has been revised ; 

 onthe East American gastropods, including those of the Antillean region 

 and thence northward to Cape Hatteras, of which chiefly the Pleuroto- 

 midce and Solenoconclia remain to be revised, and the miocene and 

 pliocene tertiary fauna of the United States, especially the deposits ex- 

 amined last year and to some extent this year, on the west coast of 

 Florida, from Tampa southward. Work on the gastropods of the Blake 

 expedition has been continued in connection with the review of the East 

 American forms above referred to. Information or assistance of more 

 or less importance was furnished to the following persons, among others, 

 the correspondence often including several letters, and the identifica- 

 tion of material consuming the available part of several days of labor. 



