Sea Shells 
of New Zealand 
Plate V 
No. 23 
Plate XI 
No. 11 
Plate XI 
No. 20 
dingiest bivalve of all the New Zealand shellfish, it is a 
small, irregularly, asymmetrical shell of a yellowish or 
greyish white, which at first sight one might mistake for 
one of the Venerupis species. The beaks are relatively 
large, and situated towards the anterior end. From the 
beaks to the posterior end are two fairly sharp ridges, 
which, in the juvenile shell, are furnished with small hol- 
low spines. Sculptured with rather conspicuous and irregu- 
larly undulating folds concentrically arranged. The interior 
is smooth, shining, and yellowish white. The margins are 
irregular, and the valves do not entirely close. It attains 
a length of five-eighths of an inch, and lives from low- 
water mark down to five hundred fathoms. They may be 
found in crevices under boulders, on the bottom of old 
punts, and especially embedded in the roots of the Macro- 
cystis, a large brown seaweed with broad leaves and a 
thick, smooth, long stalk. This is the same weed that is 
washed up in such huge quantities attached to large Horse 
mussels after a prolonged storm. 
Throughout New Zealand. Mount Maunganui; Chat- 
ham and Auckland Islands. 
PANOPEA ZEALANDICA (Panope, a Nereid or sea- 
nymph; New Zealand).—A rough, strongly-built, though 
comparatively thin, oblong bivalve of a greyish-white col- 
our, with a concentrically wrinkled surface, having its 
shortest diameter from the dorsal to the ventral border, 
these borders being nearly straight and parallel. The most 
striking feature of the Panopea is the extremely wide gape 
at the posterior end, from which the siphons protrude; 
these are united, and form an enormous trunk-like organ, 
of an orange-yellow colour, and having a wrinkled leathery 
surface. The siphons are about a foot or eighteen inches 
long, and cannot be retracted within the valves, as is the 
usual case with bivalves. The animals burrow in the sand | 
till only the tips of the siphon remain exposed. The shell 
may be as much as four inches long by two and a-quarter 
inches wide. The species is not common, but may be, on 
rare occasions, washed ashore in numbers after a severe 
storm. Found from extreme low water to a depth of 
several fathoms. 
North and South Islands. Mount Maunganui; Chatham 
Islands. | 
PHOLADIDEA SPATHULATA (pholeo, to burrow; 
spathulata, shaped like a spatula or spatha, a broad flat 
blade)—A Phola, or rock-boring mollusc, bulbous and 
round at the anterior end, and about one and three-quarter 
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