KEPOKT ON THE GASTEROPODA. 337 



Shell. — Strong, white, dark-brown tipped, biconical, with a short, stout, scalar spire, 

 angulated whorls, a roundly contracted marginated suture, and a small body-whorl, coni- 

 cally narrowed into a small unequal-sided snout. Sculpture : Longitudinals — on the 

 earlier whorls there are very small, narrow, oblique ribs originating in a mid-whorl row 

 of tubercles, but on the last whorl the riblets almost disappear : there are fine scratches in 

 the lines of growth ; these are peculiarly sharp and regular in the sinus-area. Spirals — 

 the whorls are bisected by a strong angular keel sparsely but regularly set with small 

 round knobs, from which the longitudinal ribs descend ; below the suture there is a narrow 

 cylindrical collar of two fine contiguous threads : the sinus-area is free of these ; but from 

 the keel downwards the surface is covered by fine narrow rounded threads, separated by 

 broader intervals ; near the keel these are crowded ; on the point they are wider apart, on 

 the base they are most sparse : besides these, there is a delicate microscopic fretting. 

 Colour porcellanous white, dead or frosted in the interstices, but pellucid and glossy on 

 the spiral threads ; the apex is dark ruddy brown. Spire conical, scalar, shortish, blunt. 

 Apex consists of 3J> cylindrically globose rounded whorls separated by a linearly impressed 

 suture ; they rise to a flattened top, consisting of fully 1^ whorls, in the midst of which 

 lies the very minute and immersed tip. These whorls are coloured of a deep, rich, trans- 

 lucent, faintly ruddy brown ; the earliest ones, perhaps from rubbing, are glossy, but 

 further on they are crossed by crowded, curved, sharpish, almost microscopic riblets, 

 between which are finely microscopic spirals whose course is not quite uniform. Whorls 

 7-g ; but the shell is probably not quite full-grown : they are of very regular and slow 

 increase, broad and short, each one laps up on the one before it, and is there shortly cylin- 

 drical, has then a pretty long, concave, and somewhat horizontal shoulder to the keel, 

 which is right-angled ; below this the whorls are cylindrical with a slight contraction 

 downwards to the inferior suture. The body-whorl contracts from the keel downwards, 

 with a convexly conical and very unequally-sided base, produced into a small bluntly 

 pointed snout. Suture a very shallow rounded furrow defined by the infrasutural collar 

 and the contraction of the whorls. Mouth angularly pear-shaped, being truncate above 

 and prolonged into the broadish canal below. Outer lip leaves the body at a right angle, 

 and advances direct to the keel, from which point to the end of the snout it forms almost 

 a straight line ; its edge is at the keel thrown out into a high shoulder, between which and 

 the body lies the shallow, open, rounded sinus, with a narrow triangular shelf between it 

 and the body-whorl : the lip-edge is thin throughout. Inner lip is excavated somewhat 

 deeply and flatly into the thickness of the shell, and runs on to the extreme point of the 

 rather short and oblique pillar, whose inner edge has a long gradual twist. H. 0'37 in. 

 B. 0-2. Penultimate whorl, height 0*08. Mouth, height 0*2, breadth 01. 



The classification of this species is not very satisfactory. It may quite well be a Surcula ; but 

 the stained apes deserves stronger recognition than that place would give it. The sculpture of the 



(ZOOL. CHALL. EXP. PART XLII. 18S5.) Tt 43 



