Pvn H,i I'UitlS

ASTARTE. 319
species of shells. The recent diffusion of this species
appears
to have been southward : I cannot find it enu-
merated in any list of Arctic or even Scandinavian
mollusca; but it has been recorded by Mr. M fAndrew
and myself as Mediterranean, and by the former as
dredged at the Canaries. It is probably a pliocene fossil
of Apulia under von Miinstei^s name of A. laevigata,
and an inhabitant of the iEgean (in 70-112 fathoms) as
the A.pusilla of Forbes.
The animal of this diminutive and pretty species has
escaped notice. The shells are often drilled by the
smaller Muricidcs. When fresh they are semitrans-
parent, so that the marginal
indentation is visible out-
side. The young are transversely oval, and in shape
not unlike Pisidium pusillum. The hinge is now and
then reversed, as in A. compressa. Probably such mon~
sters are not exceedingly rare, but may not have been
searched for.
Turton proposed to make another genus (Goodallia)
out of the present species and its plain-edged variety
(Mactra minutissima, Montagu), from an erroneous
notion that the ligament was internal. Two or three
more generic and specific names have been bestowed on
the same species by different writers, all of which may
be treated as obsolete.
A. crebricostata of Forbes inhabits the Arctic seas : it
has never been taken alive, or even in a suspiciously
fresh state, on our coasts. Valves have been dredged
by Mr. M fAndrew off the west coast of Shetland, and
also by that gentleman, Mr. Barlee, and myself at dif-
ferent times in the Hebrides. The species nearest to it
is A. sulcata, from which it differs in its more oblique
outline and compressed form, finer and more constantly
numerous ribs, and its peculiar epidermis, which is