16 SUPPLEMENT TO THE CRAG MOLLUSCA. 



Buccinum Dalei, J. Sowerby. Crag. Moll., vol. i, p. 34, Tab. Ill, fig. 10. Supplement, 



Tab. II, fig. 9. 



Localities. Cor. Crag, Ramsholt, Sutton, and near Orford. Red Crag passim. Pluvio- 

 marine Crag, Bramerton ; Chillesford bed, Easton Bavent. 



The figure in Supplement represents a specimen of Buccinum Dalei found in the Red 

 Crag at Walton-on-the-Naze by the Rev. T. Wiltshire, who has obligingly presented it to 

 me. This specimen has the volutions in a reversed direction, that is to say from right to left. 

 The late Dr. S. P. Woodward told me in 1864 that he had also found the fragment of a 

 specimen of this species in the Coralline Crag with a sinistral volution, and as this shell 

 had not been previously known in that reversed condition, I thought it deserving of a 

 special representation. Mr. Robert Bell has very recently showed me a similar specimen 

 from the Red Crag of Waldringfield. The circumstance that these specimens should have 

 been discovered within a short period would seem rather to indicate a slight tendency in 

 this species to vary its mode of volution, and perhaps if a few individuals of this form 

 congregated together a progeny possessing a sinistral volution might have been produced. 



The form of this species resembles in its general contour that of Buc. undatum, but 

 it has a more distinct plait or tooth at the base of the columella, like that of Nassa, and 

 Mr. Hancock pointed out that the animal had a different kind of " lingual ribbon " from 

 B. undatum. In consequence of this character, and of possessing a different form of 

 operculum, Dr. W. Stimpson, in an elaborate paper published in the ' Canadian 

 Naturalist,' 1865, vol. ii (wherein he describes fifteen recent species in the genus 

 Buccinum), has, at p. 366, proposed for it the generic name of Liomesus " with Buc. Dalei 

 as the type." Mr. Jeffreys (' Brit. Conch.,' vol. iv, p. 297, 1867) has given to this shell 

 the name of Buccinopsis. 1 Dr. Gray in 1859 proposed a genus under the name of 

 Cominella, to receive species resembling Buccinum, having an operculum like that of the 

 Murices and Fusi, in which the nucleus is terminal at the inner base of the mouth, 

 increasing by semi-elliptical layers. 



If the form of the operculum be sufficient of itself to consitute a generic character, I 

 think our species will have to be referred to Cominella, should that be of prior establish- 

 ment. With this uncertainty, and being unable to ascertain the date of priority for these 

 different names, I have left our Crag species in its original position of Buccinum. A 

 specimen of B. Dalei is in the Norwich Museum from the Fluvio-marine Crag, and 



1 This has no generic connection with Buccinanops, a word of similar meaning proposed hy D'Orbigny, 

 1839, of which Herrmannsen says " Etym. vocabulum hybridum non admittendum ;" neither is it generically 

 related to two Eocene species figured by Deshayes with the name Buccinopsis (' An. sans Vert, du Bas de 

 Par.,' t. xi, pi. xciii, figs. 21 — 23 and 29—32), afterwards described as Truncaria, Adams. 



