MUSEUM NOTES. l69
by Mr. Walter Crouch, F.Z.S., about 1890, when he obtained a
dead shell from the Crouch river near Burnham, and living
specimens have since been found there. We have in the
Museum two valves sent, with other things, by a dredgerman
from the same locality. And Mr. J. E. Cooper and Mr. A. S.
Kennard have since presented to the Museum a set of Kentish
specimens, together with some notes, from which a portion of
the following account is compiled.
The original record of the mollusc in England was by Mr.
Cooper in the Proc. Malacological Society, June 14th, 1895:—
" In April, 1895, I found at Burnham-on-Crouch, Essex, a shell which
Mr. E. A. Smith identified as Petricola pholadiformis, Lam. It was picked out
of a large heap of oyster and whelk shells which had been dredged in the
river. One valve was considerably broken, but this was probably owing to
Petricola pholadiformis, Lam. From the Report of the Invertebrata of Massachusetts,
by Dr. A. A. Gould.
rough usage; the fresh condition of the specimen points to its having lived in
the river, where it was probably introduced with oysters. Mr. W. Crouch
has also found an example of this species at Burnham."
And in the same journal, under date the 8th of May, it is
recorded that :—
" Mr. W. Crouch exhibited specimens of Petricola pholadiformis from the
River Crouch, Essex, and remarked that two living specimens had to his
knowledge been taken in that river, both at Cricksea, a mile west of Burnham,
in association with Pholas crispata.''
And at the same meeting Mr. J. E. Cooper and Mr. A. S.
Kennard, exhibited the first Kentish specimens, obtained in the
spring at Herne Bay and near Sandwich. Mr. Cooper published