24 
App;:>’mx. 
laled ; tubercles obsolete on the angle of last volution ; beneath this angle 
and on the slight contraction ot the 3 inferior volutions are very fine 
equal spiral lines; summit of volutions oblique and concave ; canal wide, 
moderately impressed. 
Locality. Mr. King’s marl. 
This species is the most nearly allied to B. canaliculatum of any Mio- 
cene species. Compared with a specimen of the latter nearly of the same 
size it has smaller and more numerous tubercles, a wider and less deeply 
impressed canal, narrower body volution, a shorter siphonal canal and 
larger revolving lines. The fine lines beneath the carina arc wanting in 
B. canaliculatum. 
It is a generally received opinion that some species of Miocene shells 
escaped the destruction of the general fauna, and however unaccountable 
this may seem to be, yet the small amount of variation, and in a few spe- 
cies none at all, seems to indicate that some few kinds ot shells are now 
living which originated in the Miocene period. Dr. Yarrow, who was 
stationed at Beaufort, N. C., has collected great numbers of the marine 
and estuary shells of the adjacent coast, which prove that many of the 
existing Testacea of the West India coasts, as well as of the Atlantic and 
Gulf coasts of Florida, are now living in the waters about Beaufort. 
Among these shells, Oliva litterata , Lam, is very abundant,* a shell whicli 
lives in myriads in Tampa Bay, whilst there is a Miocene Oliva equally 
abundant in the bank of Cape Fear river, which, when compared with the 
litterata , offers no character by which to distinguish it from that species. 
It is found associated with many extinct shells, and therefore the bed con- 
taining it cannot be confounded with the Post Pliocene, which contains no 
extinct species, and does not occur nearly so far up Cape Fear river. Even 
a trace of the colored marking of the fossil in question corresponds with 
that of the recent shell. This fact, as well as the absolute identity of char- 
acters between the fossil Marginella Umatula , Conrad, and a species liv- 
ing on the coast of South Carolina, leads me to believe that other recent 
shells have lived in the Miocene era. I therefore suggest that the following 
species of that formation may be now living, viz : Anomia ephippium,ZM., 
Lucina divaricata, Lam., L. Conradii cT Orb.) Tellina flexuosa, Say, crepi- 
dula unguiformis, Lam., and C. fornicata, Say. In a future Report on the 
Geological Survey of North Carolina I will make a more extended list of 
such species as appear to be both recent and fossil. 
BemarliS on the Tertiary formations of the Atlantic slope. 
The study of the Tertiary fossils of North Carolina has confirmed my 
opinion of the Miocene age of ail those strata of sand and clay which bor- 
der the Atlantic from Cumberland conn ty. New Jersey’, to the middle of 
