CONTRIBUTION TO THE PALEONTOLOGY OF TRINIDAD. 69 



The Soldado shell has these plications unusually oblique, otherwise the spire 

 resembles those of specimens of C. heilprini from the Lignitic of Wood's Bluff, 

 Alabama. The single example from Soldado is, unfortunately, too imperfect 

 for any positive identification or description. 



Locality. — Bed No. 8, Soldado Rock, Gulf of Paria. 



Geological horizon. — Lignitic Eocene. 



Genus VOLUTILITHES Swainson, 1840. 

 Volutilithes pariaensis new species. Plate X, Figure 10. 



Description. — Shell broadly fusiform; spire acute, about one-third the total 

 height; whorls eight, of which the first two are minute, smooth, nuclear, the 

 following sculptured by rather delicate spiral striae and more marked longitudinal 

 riblets (six in the dorsal side of the last volution), riblets interrupted especially 

 on the body whorl by a large subsutural spiral groove which gives a very pretty 

 coronate or beaded appearance; columella entirely concealed by a silicious 

 matrix. 



Height of shell 18, greatest width 9 mm. 



Remarks. — This shell exhibits the general features of sculpture of V. rugata 

 Conrad 42 from the Midway of Texas and Alabama. Indeed, the writer is in 

 doubt whether it should not be placed as a variety of that species. Yet on com- 

 paring with a large number of specimens of rugata it is so unlike them in form, so 

 much broader and shorter, that it is finally left tentatively as a separate species. 



The Soldado shell in outline is like V. saffordi AZ which Professor Harris 

 regards as a variety of rugata}* But the type of Gabb's shell is only part of the 

 body whorl and too fragmentary for positive comparisons. It was obtained 

 from the Midway of Tennessee, and, as far as one can judge, was very similar to 

 the Soldado shell. 



Locality. — Bed No. 2 Soldado Rock, Gulf of Paria. 



Geological horizon. — Midway Eocene. 



History of the genus. — Dr. Dall 45 makes some interesting remarks on the 

 history of Volutilithes. It began during the Cretaceous, and reached its greatest 

 development in the Eocene. After a period it gradually decreased in number of 

 species, until only one typical species (V. philippiana Dall), and a second belonging 

 to another section (V. abyssicola Ad. & Reeve) are known in the living state. 

 Both are found in deep water where they appear as remnants of a fauna which 

 has become mostly extinct in shallow water. 



Volutilithes whitensis new species. 



Volutilithes radula White, Arch, do Museu Nac. do Rio de Janeiro, vol. VII, pp. 126-127, pi. X, 

 figs. 15-17, 1887. Not of Sowerby, Forbes (1846), nor Stoliczka, 1868. 



Volutilithes radula Arnold (in Branner's report), Bull. Museum Comp. Zoology, Harvard College, 

 vol. XLIV, p. 16, 1904. 



42 Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., vol. IV, p. 292, pi. 47, fig. 32, 1860. 



43 Fasciolaria saffordi Gabb, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., vol. IV, p. 390, pi. 68, fig. 6, 1860. 



44 Bull. Amer. Pal., I, pp. 187-198, 1896. 



45 Trans. Wagner Inst. Science, vol. Ill, p. 74. 



