United States or Italy ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Cyrena Duchastelii, Nyst : 1838. The following marine shells occur mixed with the freshwater species above enumerated: Buccinum undatum, Littorina littorea, Nassa reticulata, Purpura lapillus, Tellina solidula, Cardium edule, and fragments of some others.

Among many univalves agreeing with those of Africa on the eastern side of the Atlantic are Cypraea sanguinolenta, Buccinum lyratum, and Oliva flammulata. Amphistegina Hauerina, d'Orbigny. M. Alcide d'Orbigny has shown that the foraminifera of the Vienna basin differ alike from the Eocene and Pliocene species, and agree with those of the faluns, so far as the latter are known.

The first was a salt-pool lying in a depression on the second terrace, some one hundred and fifty feet above the sea. This pool contained living marine shells, identical with those now found along the shore. Among them were Fusus, Mytilus, Buccinum, Fissurella, Patella, and Voluta, all found in the same numeric relations as those in which they now exist upon the beach below.

What we chiefly learn from this writer as to the dyeing process is first, that sometimes the liquid derived from the murex only, sometimes that of the purpura or buccinum only, was applied to the material which it was wished to colour, while the most approved hue was produced by an application of both dyes separately.

Here are several species of the genera Murex, Fusus, Buccinum, Mitra, Trochus, and Turbo. Further, there are found here a large Fissurella, and six species of a genus which, from its simple, unwound shell, would be immediately taken for a Patella; the creature, however, closely resembles the Fissurella, with the difference that only one gill is visible in the fissure over the neck.

By far the greater number of the recent marine species occurring in the several Crag formations are still inhabitants of the British seas; but even these differ considerably in their relative abundance, some of the commonest of the Crag shells being now extremely scarce as, for example, Buccinum Dalei while others, rarely met with in a fossil state, are now very common, as Murex erinaceus and Cardium echinatum.