A Monograph of West American Melanellid Mollusks. By Paul Bartsch (Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, Vol. 53, pp. 295–356, pls. 34–39, Aug. 1917). This completes the discussion of the West American mollusks of the super-family Pyramidelloideae, comprising the family Pyramidellidae, which has been previously treated, and the Melanellidae here considered. The former are readily distinguished by having the “nepionic whorls sinistral and tilted; the axis of the early whorls usually being at right angles to that of the succeeding turns, in the first of which the nuclear whorls are frequently quite strongly imbedded.” In the latter the early whorls are dextral and never tilted or immersed. A review of the work done in this group is followed by the descriptions of the species, including forty-nine new species and one new genus Eulimostraca. The illustrations are excellent.

New and Little Known Species of South American Mussels of the genus Diplodon. By William B. Marshall (Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, Vol. 53, pp. 381–388, Pls. 50–55, August, 1917). Two new species Diplodon felipponei and D. fortis are described and figured, together with six species described by Mr. C. T. Simpson in his Descriptive Catalogue of the Naiades and not previously figured.

Notes on the Shells of the Genus Epitonium and its Allies of the Pacific Coast of America. By William H. Dall (Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum, Vol. 53, pp. 471–488, August, 1917). An interesting account of the various groups and subgenera is followed by descriptions of forty-two new species.

The name Pictoscala is proposed for a section, type Scalaria lineata Say.

Studies on Australian Mollusca. Pt. XIII. By C. Hedley (Proc. Linn. Soc. New South Wales, 1916, vol. 41, pt. 4, pp. 680–719, pls. 46–52, issued April 4, 1917). The author’s notes under Tridacna gigantea Perry are of such general interest that we quote them in part. “Under the name of Chama gigas the father of Natural History seems to have embraced the whole of the modern genus Tridacna. For the name gigas, as restricted to a single species, the candidates are the shell subsequently named squamosa by Lamarck and a huge species whose valves in the Ulrica Museum, together weighed 498 pounds.

“After careful examination, Hanley decided that the furbelowed clam, such as Reeve has figured for T. squamosa, ought rightly to bear the name gigas. He based his verdict on the ground that the actual shell owned by LinnÉ as representing gigas, is the Lamarckian squamosa, and that to this apply most of the literary references. Linnean contemporaries such as Born, Regenfuss and Chemnitz, while making casual references to the giant, all agree in figuring and describing squamosa as the Linnean gigas.

“Discriminating in 1819 between the species his predecessors had confused, Lamarck unlawfully used the name gigas for the largest form, while for the Linnean gigas he proposed squamosa. Attentive to the remarks of Hanley, Hidalgo in 1903, renamed the biggest species T. lamarcki. But in 1811, Perry had already used the name Chama gigantea for ‘the largest shell at present known.’ As the young of the giant has not yet been traced to the adult, it is still possible that squamosa is a juvenile deeper-water form of the large intertidal and abraded gigantea.

“The heaviest known are a pair weighing 550 lbs., which Cuvier and Lamarck relate were presented by the Venetian Republic to Francis I. These still exist, their edges bound with brass, as holy-water basins in the cathedral of St. Sulpice, in Paris.

“The photographs of Saville Kent show the giant clams in their natural position on the Great Barrier Reef, where they occur free and exposed at low tide, standing on their umbones, and showing their brightly colored mantle and so-called eyes as they gape.”

There are many other interesting notes bearing on nomenclature, and the animals of Australian species. Six new species are described and twenty-nine species figured.—C. W. J.

An Annotated List of Shells from Northern Michigan. By Mina L. Winslow (Occasional papers, Mus. Zool., Univ. Mich., No. 42, July 1, 1917) a list of sixty-five species from Schoolcraft, Alger and Chippewa counties, also a list from Isle Royale.