Page 6 February 1980 No. 2 NeW YORK SHEED _ChUS NOTES 
AT SKY LAKE, NORTH MIAMI 
Anne and Albert Taxson 
(Anne and Albert Taxson have been active members oF ec cesae iE 
Shell Club for more than twenty years. Last y Beat Lode tWe ech 
Florida. We are very glad to have the Shige oon a Mab tes var DR) 
was contained in a letter, of their new ne1gnvo ° “grue 
Our daily routine is going for walks around the Lekee ke SRe ieee 
what shells are around). We have help from eee ang es. y fish 
among the algae and pull out a round coiled snail ( Sa528 cornuarie- 
tis), insert their beaks into the aperture, cab a pu aM e fin 
e empty shells all over the grass. Another shell you, on 
des tuberculata (Muller). 
lanoi 
every rock under the water is ene atk along the side of the 
We've taken a few as specimens. : ’ 
lake, occasionally there are empty shells of, of all things, Corbi- 
cula leana Prime, and a freshwater mussel which I think is Anodonta 
imbecilis Say. 
There is a problem with these two bivalves. The lakes were formerly 
quarries of fossiliferous limestone. It seems that when the quar- 
ries reached the ground water the pits, which are over 100 feet in 
depth, began to fill in with fresh water. The lakes are connected 
by a system of canals that tap the salt water of the intracoastal 
waterway, thereby changing the lakes to brackish water. 
In a paper, "Recent Corbicula in North America," at the A.M.U. Con- 
vention last summer, Dr. J. P. E. Morrison quoted a new study on 
the Corbicula which stated that the Chinese species of C. fluminalis 
has been found in the Upper Rio Grande, in addition to being well 
established in the Columbia and Colorado River systems. Corbicula 
leana is from the Bay area of California. All other records from 
the U.S. are C. leana. Therefore, the shell I found on the bank of 
Sky Lake must be C. leana. 
The problem is this: The Corbicula and the Anodonta that I found 
were all dead shells. They must have been fished out by the birds. 
How did they get there? The records for the southernmost findings 
of A. imbecilis (and the furthest east in Florida) is the Ochlock- 
nee River System which runs into the Apalachicola River in the 
Florida Panhandle. Further east in Georgia the southern record is 
the Altamaha River. As far as the Corbicula is concerned, it is 
everywhere. But the lakes and canals are a closed system; they do 
not connect to any river in Florida, so the question is: How did 
these shells get there? 
If I was half a shell collector and felt a little better, I would 
go diving in the lake and look for live bivalves. To hell with the 
alligators. 

A NOTE ON MELANOIDES TUBERCULATA (Miller, 1774) 
(and remarks on other species of the same station) 
Dorothy Raeihle 
The Taxsons' report called to mind one of the = 
lected freshwater mollusks. It was in November o+ 1972 wewese” 
visiting in Inverness, Florida, and we were having a pleasant picnic 
