Book Description

Excerpt from A Monograph of the East American Scaphopod Mollusks During the latter part of the eighteenth and the first quarter of the nineteenth century many species of the abundant shallow water mollusks of the western Atlantic, especially of the larger and more conspicuous Antillean forms, were described by European naturalists. Between 1820 and 1840 several American naturalists notably Conrad and Say, added a number of species to the American list, their material coming mostly from the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the United States. At that time there had been little or no dredging done, nor, indeed, had any attempt been made at systematic, much less intensive, collecting. Only those easily acquired mollusks were known that lived either in the shallow water of bays or that had been cast upon exposed beaches. As the American Scaphopods live below tidal range and are rarely found upon beaches they almost wholly escaped the notice of the earlier collectors. A few Dentalia, probably from Antillean beaches, had, however, found place in foreign collections and were described in the careless manner of the time, usually with doubtful or no locality records attached. Such species were Dentalium semistriatum of Turton, published in 1819 as coming from Dublin Bay, and also D. nebulosum of Deshayes in 1825. In 1834 Guilding described D. semistriolatum and D. sowerbyi as positively Antillean species, and these stand as the first recorded of our Dentalia that may be accepted with reasonable assurance. Chenu, in the first volume of his imposing series of Illustrations Conchyliologiques, appearing about 1843, gives excellent figures of his own and of Deshayes's species of Dentalium, some of which may belong to the western Atlantic. These are Dentalium nebulosum Deshayes (already referred to), D. translucidum Chenu, D. Americanum Chenu, D. pictei (Deshayes) Chenu, D. ensiforme Chenu, and a few others that are suspiciously like some well-known West Indian forms. There are good reasons, to be later discussed, for rejecting them all for our present list. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.