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TERTIARY FAUNA OF FLORIDA 



2. Miilh'tia Fischer. 



Shell ribbed, with a strong posterior wing. Type Mclina Mullet: Deshayes. 



The typical Meliiia is mytiliform, compressed, and without auriculation, 

 or, at least, with no differentiated wing ; the acute anterior beak in the young 

 becomes obscure in the adult. 



The genus in America seems to have been confined to temperate waters 

 during the earlier Miocene, though the recent species are subtropical. One 

 fossil Melina is reported from the Gulf tertiaries in the lowest Eocene. 



Melina maxillata (Deshayes). 

 Perna maxillata Lam., An. s. Vert., vi., i., p. 142 (syn. e.xcL), 1S19 ; ed. Deshayes, vii., 



p. 78, 1S36. 

 Pcrna torta Say, Am. Journ. Sci., ii., p. 38, 1820 ; not of Gmelin {Ostrca), Syst. Nat., p. 



3339, 1792. 

 Pcrna inaxitlata Conrad, Med. Tert., p. 52, pi. xxvii., fig. i, 1840. 

 Pcnia Gwrarfz' Orbigny, Prodr., iii., p. 127. 



Isogiiomoii to?'ta Conr., Cat. Mio. Fos., Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. for 1S62, p. 579, 1863. 

 Mclina torta Meek, Smithsonian Checkl. Mio. Fos., p. 6. 

 Pcrna torta Whitfield, Crust. Moll. Mio. N. J., p. 36, pi. 5, figs. 12-13, 1895. 



Lower Miocene of New Jersey at Shiloh and Jericho ; of Maryland near 

 Easton, Leonardstown, and on the Patuxent; Burns and Palmer. 



The National Museum has an internal cast which measures twenty-seven 

 centimetres in length, the shell of which could hardly have been less than 

 fifteen inches long. Remarkably perfect specimens of this almost invariably 

 imperfect shell were collected by Mr. W. Palmer at Leonardstown. 



The identity of the American shell described by Lamarck shortly before 

 Say with the Perna Soldani Desh. of the Italian tertiaries (figured by Knorr, 

 Sowerby [as maxillata\ in his Genera, Goldfuss et al) has been disputed. 



They are certainly very similar, but in any case Lamarck says his shell 

 came from Virginia, and the specific name torla had been previously applied 

 by Gmelin to a variety of Melina mytiloides Gmelin, so that it was unavailable 

 for use a second time by Say. It seems that Collini in his Voy. Min. (p. 10, 

 pi. I, fig. i), printed at Mannheim in 1776, had named the European shell 

 Ostreitin polyleptoginglymum ; but, as I have not seen the work, I cannot say 

 whether the binomial system of nomenclature is used in it or not. It is most 

 convenient at present to regard the American as distinct from the European 

 shell. Orbigny, regarding the European form as the true viaxillata, renamed 

 the American shell P. Conradi. 



