Abstract
In 1900 von Ihering directed attention to the presence in certain Lamellibranchs of a special muscle lying in the posterior portion of the ventral mantle edge, close to the inner end of the inhalent siphon. This muscle consisted of two strands, each running diagonally from an origin on one valve to be inserted on the other, and crossing one another in the mid-ventral line so as to form a muscular apparatus with the appearance of a St Andrew's cross. He regarded this cruciform muscle as a specially differentiated group of fibres belonging to the pallial edge, acting as an accessory adductor muscle, a point of view in which he has been followed by all subsequent observers. To this von Ihering added the speculation that it had been by some similar process of specialisation of marginal pallial muscle fibres that the two other true adductor muscles of Lamellibranchs had originated.
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