文档介绍：SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS.
115
MONOGRAPH
AMERICAN CORBICULADJl.
(RECENT AND FOSSIL.)
PREPARED FOR THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.
BY
TEMPLE PRIME.
WASHINGTON*
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION.
DECEMBER, 1865.
PREFACE.
IN the present MONOGRAPH or AMERICAN CORBICULAD^;, pre
pared at the request of the Smithsonian Institution, it is proposed
to show the present state of our knowledge of the species, both
recent and fossil, which inhabit North and South America. It
contains descriptions of all the genera of the family, whether
represented on this continent or not, descriptions of the species
found in North and South America, notices of their geographical
range, references to the collections in which authentic types of
many of the species are known to exist, parisons of the
different species with others of the same genus, indigenous and
foreign.
I have been able to identify to my entire satisfaction very nearly
all the species described as from America, and the instances in
which I have not been essful, are duly noted in the text
panying the description of the species.
I am aware of the fact that some of the genera adopted in these
pages, based chiefly upon characters drawn from the shell alone,
not to be retained with their limits nevertheless
ought present ;
our knowledge of the soft parts of the species of this family is
still so very imperfect that no other course is open to me but to
preserve for the present the genera as I find them, however de
fective they may actually be.
It will soon be necessary, in order to keep pace with other
departments of natural history, to introduce some modifications
in the limits of the genera of the Corbiculadae, but no really satis
factory or permanent result will be attained until a careful exami
nation of the soft parts shall have been made.
I am at present engaged upon a new arrangement of the genera
of the Corbiculadde, based upon characters drawn from the soft
parts and f