122 PALEONTOLOGY OF NEW JERSEY. 



Meek states does not exist in his shell, P. Nehraecusis, upon which the 

 genus Avas founded. There is no other existing genus into which it seems 

 to fit as well as in Bolium. 



Formation and locality: In a hard, blackish-green pyritousmarl of the 

 Lower Marl Beds at Freehold, New Jersey. Collection at Rutgers College. 



Genus FICUS Rosseau. 



FiCUS PRECEDENS, n. Sp. 



Plate XV, Figs. 7, 8. 



Shell small, pyriform; volutions about three, very ventricose, inflated 

 in the upper part, rapidly attenuated below and contracted to form a mod- 

 erately long, slender canal and beak, which is very slightly bent ; spire low, 

 but the inner volutions distinctly showing above the outer ones, with a well 

 defined suture; aperture elongate-elliptical, prolonged below to the end of 

 the canal, which is very narrow; surface of the shell marked by twelve 

 principal prominent, spiral carina, between which there is in each space a 

 single subordinate ridge showing on the cast ; toward the lower j^art of the 

 volution and on the beak they are more equal in size, and on the body of 

 the volution the principal carina are nodose, or serrated, from the crossing 

 of transverse ribs which pass across the volution in a nearly straight line 

 parallel to the margin of the outer lip of the aperture. In a fragment of 

 the matrix, from near the inner part of the outer whorl the principal spiral 

 ridges are seen to be sharply carinate, and the transverse striae fine and 

 numerous; columella without ridges or folds of any kind. 



The shell has had exactly the features of the recent forms of the genus 

 FicHs (Pynikt pars) and the cast shows that the shell has been extremely 

 thin and fragile, like the living ones of the genus, with a strongly reticu- 

 lated sui'face (a part of the matrix of the spire shows it to be strongly can- 

 cellated). The columella has not been thickened to any degree, the space 

 left by the removal of tlie shell being very narrow and the outer surface of 

 it smooth. There are two or three species of gasteropods in the New Jer- 

 sey Cretaceous rocks, which may readily be confounded with this one if not 

 carefully compared, especially Perisolax retifcr ( = Fiisiis retifer Gabb), but 



