466 NOTES AXD EXHIBITS. 



of which, so fai" as I can learn, science has in the past half 

 century taught us nothing new. An excellent account, but 

 quite neglected by later writers, of the shell and its habitat by 

 J. Griffiths may be seen in the Phil. Trans. 1806, pp. 269-273, 

 Pis. X. and XI. The specimens he procured from Sumatra were 

 examined by Sir Everard Home, who compared them to Teredo, 

 figured the palettes (op. cit.- PL xii. ff. 4, 5), and what he sup- 

 posed to be a valve (f. 6) This latter Gray holds (P.Z.S. 1857, 

 p. 245) to have been " evidently a fragment of the plates which 

 close the end of the tube." No naturalist has seen the animal 

 of Kuphus ; it is presumed to be a Pelecypod, but it is a matter 

 of dispute whether it possesses valves or not. In Tryon's Catalogue 

 of the Pholadacea (Am. Journ. Conch. III. 1867, Suppl. p. 21), 

 the species is quoted from " Philippines, Van Dieman's Land," 

 the latter an evident blunder. The examples before you were 

 collected by our fellow member, Mr. Brazier, who found them 

 fairly abundant sticking out of a coral reef off Mboli on the 

 coast of Florida Island, Solomons, during the cruise of H.M.S. 

 Curacoa. This record extends the known range of Kuphus by 

 several thousand miles. But from my personal experience I am 

 able to furnish an intermediate habitat. In 1890 I extracted 

 from a raised coral reef of recent formation, at Redscar Head, 

 British New Guinea, several fragments of Kuphus pipes which 

 now lie in the Museum of the Geological Survey of Queensland. 

 Mr. Louis Becke, the well known author of " By Reef and Palm," 

 tells me that he remembers using in the eastern archipelagoes 

 fragments of Kuphus tube, broken into shelly rings, as convenient 

 sinkers for fishing lines. He thinks it to be a deep water species. 

 It is greatly to be hoped that scientific visitors to the Pacific 

 will endeavour to procure whole specimens containing the animal 

 for investigation. Future search of the Great Barrier Reef will 

 probably result in adding this genus to the catalogue of the 

 Australian mollusca." 



Mr. Pedley showed an interesting collection of ornately carved 

 Aboriginal weapons comprising boomerangs, nullah nullahs and a 

 hielaman, from the neighbourhood of Angledool and Collarendabri 

 in the north-western part of the colony. 



