Animal. Body more or less compressed, orbicular; mantle furnished with a single row of tentacular papillæ, and with small oculiform, pedunculated disks, with regular spaces between them; rudiment of a canaliculated foot, and a byssus; mouth surrounded with fleshy appendages, irregularly ramified.

Shell. Free, regular, thin, solid, equivalve, equilateral, auriculated; summits contiguous; hinge toothless, a ligamentous membrane throughout all its extent, besides a short, thick, ligament, almost altogether internal, and filling a triangular excavation under the summit; a single subcentral muscular impression. Found in almost all seas. Sixty-two species; and, according to Defrance, ninety-eight fossil.

4. Genus Plagiostoma. Pl. [IX].

Animal. Entirely unknown.

Shell. Moderately thick, regular, free, subequivalve, subauriculated, the two valves nearly equally dilated, both provided with a distinct summit reflexed to the middle of a plane surface, with a large triangular slope in the middle; articulation transverse, straight, and by two distant lateral condylæ. Ten species. Fossils only.

5. Genus Plicatula. Pl. [IX].

Animal. Unknown.

Shell. Solid, adhering, subirregular, inauriculated, inequivalve, pointed at the summit, rounded and subplicated posteriorly; inferior valve without heel; hinge cephalic, longitudinal, provided upon each valve with two strong teeth, entering in corresponding cavities; ligament altogether internal and inserted in a median cavity. Inhabits the American seas. Five species.