(59) 



3. A Revised Reference List of South African Non-marine 

 Mollusca ; with Descriptions of New Species in the South 

 African Museum. By M. CONNOLLY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



LITTLE more than thirteen years have elapsed since the publication 

 of Messrs. Melvill and Ponsonby's " Contribution towards a Check- 

 List of the Non-marine Molluscan Fauna of South Africa " (Proc. 

 Mai. Soc., 1898, iii., p. 166-184), which included all species then 

 known south of the Tropic of Capricorn ; and of Dr. Sturany's 

 " Catalog der . . . siidafrikanischen Land-und Siisswasser-Mol- 

 lusken " (Wien, 1898), in which he described several new forms, 

 and listed, with few exceptions, all older ones which had been up to 

 that date reported from south of the line roughly formed by the 

 Zambesi and Kunene Eivers. 



In this short time, however, the number of non-marine shells 

 known in South Africa has increased by nearly one-half, the 408 

 species listed by Sturany having grown to 586, despite the fact that 

 many forms then considered distinct have since been altogether 

 expunged or placed in synonymy. 



No apology, therefore, is needed for the appearance of a revised 

 reference list, and it only remains to add a few words of explanation 

 as to special features introduced in the new work. 



At Dr. Peringuey's desire, I have adopted Sturany's more extended 

 geographical boundaries. Although Messrs. Melvill and Ponsonby's 

 invaluable series of articles in the Ann. and Mag. Nat. History has 

 left comparatively little to be cleared up regarding the non-marine 

 mollusca to the south of the Tropic of Capricorn, very little is known, 

 conchologically, of much of the region just north of that limit, and 

 the present list must necessarily leave much room for amplification 

 in this direction. 



Very few South African non-marine fossils are yet known, and 

 most of them were described in papers dealing also with recent 

 shells. I have therefore included both recent and fossil species in 



6 



