364 Mya arenaria in San Francisco Bay. [ May, — 
ters, yet he certainly would have noticed it, had the shells before 
him been closely like the more common Linnean species. 
Middendorff credits it to Sitka} etc., but this is not supported 
by any of the numerous subsequent authorities. 
As to its presence on the Asiatic side of the North Pacific, 
Middendorff credits it to “Kamchatka” and the “ Ochotsk sea.” 
Jay, in (Vol. 11) Perry’s Japan Expedition, describes it even as 
“V1. japonica,” and credits it to “ Volcano bay, Island of Yeddo,” 
remarking that it ‘is very similar to J arenaria.” Arthur 
Adams,? who collected in Japan, pronounced it identical. It has 
also been detected in Hakodadi bay, and Professor Morse says 
“the typical northern form (JZ arenaria) lives in the Gulf of 
Yeddo to-day, and its shells are found in the mounds of Omori.”® 
It must be admitted that the species is found in these Asiatic 
stations upon the testimony here adduced, but as to its presence 
on the coast of Western America at any point north of or any- 
where outside of San Francisco bay, the fact that neither Nuttall, 
Jewett, Kennerly, Lord, Swan, Cooper, Harford, Dunn, Hemphill, 
Hepburn, Fischer, Dall, Newcomb (in the field), and many others, 
as well as myself, have never detected a specimen prior to the 
date of my friend Newcomb’s description (or since, so far as I 
can learn), ought to be sufficient evidence on this point. 
From whence, then, came the seed which has produced the 
abundance of this species which has spread and is now spreading 
rapidly along the shores of San Francisco bay ? 
Examine the ancient shell heaps and mounds found hereabout, 
and one may find the thin broken valves of the Macomas, but 
not a fragment of the shell of Mya. One may find the shells of 
the native Haliotis and Olivella and the beads and money or orna- 
ments made from them; the bones of the common California 
deer, of the whales, and perhaps other animals, all of which are 
still to be found in the neighborhood or not many miles away, but 
not a piece of Mya. The ancient clam-diggers, whose kitchen- 
middens are met with in many places on the Alameda and other 
shores of the bay, whose skeletons and implements are sometimes 
exhumed or discovered, had “ passed over to the majority” cen 
turies before the advent of Mya arenaria in California waters: 
To proceed to the question—was the seed of this mollusk intro- 
1B. A. Report, 1856, p. 219. 
2 Td. Rep., 1863, p. 588. 
3 AMER. NATURALIST, Sept., 1880, p. 657-8. 
