Pvn H,i I'UitlS

244 lucinidjE.
digged much in nearly every bay."
He suspected that
Loripes lacteus (single valves of which are exceedingly
must have been
plentiful near St. Peter's Port, Guernsey)
mistaken for the present species. Var. 1. Many places,
in deep water. Var. 2. In shallow water, Guernsey and
Scalloway (J. G. J.) ; Bantry Bay (Norman). This
species occurs in the tertiary beds of the Clyde (Geikie),
Belfast (Hyndman and Grainger), Sussex ( Godwin -
Austen), and the Mammalian, Red, and Coralline Crag
(S.Wood). Abroad it ranges from Iceland (Steenstrup)
to Messina (Sars). Brocchi and Philippi enumerate it
as an Italian fossil. I have found it in the upper mio-
cene tertiaries of the South of France,
as well as in the
Uddevalla and Christiania beds. Gould describes it as
a Massachusetts shell, and Stimpson from the Boston
coast ; but the latter now denies that it is our species,
and distinguishes it by the greater size, by
the ribs
being more distant and regular, and by the colour, which
Gould says is white : Stimpson has therefore named it
filosa. However, if the claim to distinction rests only on
these comparative characters, I do not see any reason
for separating the Atlantic and Transatlantic species.
Montagu states that this shell is "particularly abundant
at Falmouth, amongst the sand dredged from the
harbour for the purpose of manure; by
which means
it is common in the arable fields about that place."
hope geologists may not be misled, and consider it
fossil, if they find it in such situations. They
I
need as
much caution as antiquaries in the exercise of their
pursuit, although they are not so liable to be wilfully
deceived. It may be worth while to fabricate coins,
flint knives, and similar relics of historic and prehistoric
times but ; fossil shells have no such marketable value,
they are not so easily forged or imitated, nor would even