Harry and other members of Sam's Club:

>Dear Tom, other floater-fanciers, and those who haven't the grit to simply
>delete these messages before reading,
>
>(1) Sam, as you refer to him, specifically mentioned "rousse" in referring
>to the nacre of his Anodonta atra.

I have seen many rousse, rose, et jaune P. grandis. Seems to be related to
old age and possibly parasites.

>(2) Sam specifically said the taxon was collected in the Hudson River
>(which nicely coincides with his tutoring some of my children's cousins
>(true!) at Livingston-on-Hudson just before his first trip west through
>Pennsylvania.  Once across the Allegheny divide, he had his first chance
>for a Pycanodon grandis.

Mon erreur! The locality is indeed mentioned in the preceding paragraph.
However, Strayer & Jirka's 1997 The Pearly Mussels of New York State
(highly recommended) clearly puts P. grandis in the Hudson River, although
they speculate that it is a "recent" immigrant through the Erie & Champlain
Canals. These canals were built between 1797 and 1857 (don't have the exact
date for these specific canals) so they may have been in place in Sam's time.

For me the fact remains that a) the description could apply to more than
one species, b) these species are sympatric in the Hudson, c) no
illustration exists (not that Sam's stick-figure drawings could help), and
d) I have not heard of a "type" being found in the Poulson collection or
anywhere else. My conclusion: nomen dubium.




*****************************************
 G Thomas Watters, PhD
 Ohio Biological Survey &
 Aquatic Ecology Laboratory
 The Ohio State University
 1315 Kinnear Road
 Columbus, OH 43212 USA
 v: 614-292-6170  f: 614-292-0181
******************************************

"The world is my oyster except for months with an 'R' in them" - Firesign
Theater

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he
has to buy a license" - GTW

"Beliefs are more powerful than facts" - Duke Paulus Atreides