750 SIR HENRY H. HOWORTH ON THE [Nov. 9, 



brackish as high as Kadland. (Nyt Mag. f. Nat. vol. i. (1838) 

 p. 187.) 



It is unfortunate that no one has visited and critically described 

 this important section since 1838, for the facts as reported seem 

 very haixl to explain. That a peculiarly littoral mollusc like Mya 

 arenaria should have lived with a number of others whose habitat 

 was several feet under water seems incredible. It appears to me a 

 great deal more likely that, like other cases before cited, the Mya 

 was an adventitious stranger in the shell-bed, and either had come 

 up from the sea with the inrushing salt-water as above mentioned 

 and got mixed with shells of an earlier date, or had been able to live 

 at Kadland for a while during some period when the access of salt- 

 water was more continuous. It seems further incredible, from 

 what we know of the habits of the mollusc and its adaptability, 

 that if it had reached the Skawe, in Norway, before the coast 

 had risen several metres at that point, that it should not have 

 occuri'ed in other raised beaches somewhere in Scandinavia, and 

 should not also have found its way into the Christianiafiord and 

 thence into the Baltic until so lately, and I cannot square Brogger's 

 statement on page 556 that at Kadland the Mya may date from 

 the time of the upheaved shell-bed, with his statement on page 605 

 Avhei-e he says : " Ogsd e Norge var Mya arenaa-ia Mdtil ikke 

 aiifort fra postglacial forekomst." The only other explanation of 

 this Kadland shell-bed is that it may be of a different age to the 

 other raised beaches of Scandinavia, and may perhaps represent 

 an earlier horizon than is represented by those shell-beds. Hereby 

 hangs an important issue. 



Professor Brogger is very emphatic abovit the Mya arenaria not 

 occurring in any of the raised beds of Norway, perhaps with the 

 single exception of Kadland, and, as we have seen, the same view 

 is generally held in tlie North in regaixl to the raised beds of 

 Sweden and Denmark, and, with one notable exception, this seems 

 incontrovertible. That exception has been overlooked by the 

 northern malacologists and geologists. It is that of the famous 

 shell-beds at Udclevalla and Capellbacken. The evidence is 

 very strong, if not conclusive, that it occurs in the Uddevalla 

 beds, although Brogger does not mention it in his account of 

 them (ojo. cit. pp. 312-322). Hisinger long ago quoted it as 

 found there, together with M. truncata (see Anteckningar i 

 Physik ocli Geognosie, 1831, v. p. 83). Gvvyn Jeffreys, in his 

 account of the MoUusca of these beds published in the Report 

 of the British Association for 1863, in which he describes all 

 the collections in the then accessible northern Museums and in 

 private hands, and in which he enumerates 83 species, distinctly 

 mentions Mya a?'ena7"ia, which is numbex-ed 20 on his list. 

 Again, in the British Museum, there is a valve of a typical 

 Mya arenaria with the critical hinge perfectly preserved which 

 came from the Thuden collection, and is labelled Uddevalla. 

 Lastly, so far back as 1747, Linnfeus seems directly to imply 

 that the shell was found in the same place. This evidence 



