BALCH: LIST OF MARINE MOLLUSCA. 
143 
? ? Hissoa latior Stimps. Veri-ill (’73), p. 655. 
Of. supra. 
Assimineidae. 
Assiminea modesta (Lea). Verrill (’84), p. 253. Assiminea 
Smith and Prime (’70), p. 393. A. grayana Leach. Verrill (’82), 
p. »525. 
This shell, rediscovered by Verrill at Newport in 1880 and iden¬ 
tified at the time as the English species A. grayana but afterward 
separated, apparently with some misgiving, and identified with 
Lea’s A. modesta (Lea, ’45), is one of the interesting occur¬ 
rences. It was found in fair numbers on four particular 
stones in a sea wall and, in spite of careful search, nowhere 
else. These stones were covered by brackish water only for a 
few minutes at high tide but were always damp, being in the 
shadow of the gang plank to the Laboratory float-stage. Here the 
animals with their strangely aberrant fused eye-stalks and tentacles 
(?), their bright red buccal mass showing plainly through the pale 
fiesh, and the translucent but solid chestnut shells with their appar¬ 
ent double suture and the sigmoid line of the intestine showing 
conspicuously on the body-whorl, might be found at any time to 
the number of three or four. After collecting all that could be 
found at one time, on the next day about the same number would 
appear on the same space of five feet by three, and nowhere else. 
Placed in salt water in the Laboratory, they crept out with all 
speed, and if at once put back three or four times they appeared 
eventually to become benumbed. There can be no doubt that the 
species is well separated from A. grayana , as the teeth (PI. 1, fig. 11) 
show well-marked difference, but the identification with Lea’s shell 
seems doubtful. Neither his figure nor his description agrees very 
well with my specimens, nor does Verrill’s figure perfectly represent 
them, though his description of the shell does so. He has not 
described the animal, which has the foot broadly rounded in front, 
obtusely pointed behind, translucent yellowish white, bearing the 
operculum on the right side ; the muzzle bilobed, slightly wrinkled, 
rather darker than foot, the red buccal mass plainly visible ; tenta¬ 
cles and eye-stalks fused, forming thick, blunt, contractile peduncles, 
each bearing two conspicuous large black eye-spots, one anterior 
superior median, the other lateral anterior, the latter being the larger 
