Pvn H,i I'UitlS

venus. 329
remarkably deep : muscular scars oval and distinctly marked.
L. 2 (nearly). B. 2.
Habitat :
Sandy
bays, and occasionally in deeper
water, from one extremity to the other of the British
seas. Bright- coloured specimens are common in the
"
Coral-sand
"
dredged in Bantry Bay for manure.
Grainger has noticed it as occurring in the postglacial
bed at Belfast, and Smith in the Clyde beds ; it is also
a Coralline Crag fossil. Its most northern limit appears
to be Finmark, and the most southern Sicily, although
it is possible that Adanson described and figured it
from the Isle of Goree, under the name of " Le Co-
tan." M fAndrew obtained specimens at low-water
in Vigo Bay and at Gibraltar; and Scandinavian au-
thors give depths varying from 3 to 50 fathoms. Phi-
lippi records it as found in the South- Italian tertiary
strata.
This species was discovered by Lister at Guernsey,
which locality (as well as Norway) Linne quotes in the
'
Systema Naturee.' Clark says " the animal is shy and
apathetic ;
the locomotion consists in screwing the shell
on its axis, and turning it from one side to the other."
M'Andrew has seen it sold in Vigo market for eating.
The shell is now and then distorted. I have specimens
obliquely twisted in the direction of the anterior side,
so as to be rather longer than broad, and another which
is inequivalve.
In one specimen, which had been in the
earlier stages of growth tinted with pink rays, the sub-
sequent layers are of a uniform yellowish-white, owing
probably to a defect of the special colouring-gland. The
cross or longitudinal striae are easily effaced, and seldom
perceptible even in living shells. The largest specimens
are found in Shetland.
It is the Pectunculus capillaceus of Da Costa, V. lenti-