736 STUDIES ON AUSTRALIAN MOLLUSCA, xii., 



ticularly acknowledged that they owed it to the botanist, Mr. 

 Fraser, apparently he who was the first Superintendent of the 

 Sydney Botanic Gardens. 



I am disposed to think that it was a foreign shell which Fraser 

 gave to the zoologists of the Astrolabe. For not only does 

 Buccinum jacksonianum differ widely in the external sculpture 

 and the armature of the aperture from Arcularia semvjranosa^ 

 with which it has been confounded, but it cannot be matched 

 with any other Australian shell. A species diflPering from either 

 that of Quoy or of Dunker was figured by Kiener under the name 

 of Buccinum jacksonimium. Deshayes, who dre^v attention to 

 this error, states that Kiener represented Quoy's species by his 

 Fig. 11 9 of B. polygyratum var.,* but I see no likeness between 

 the latter and the Astrolabe figure. Marrat supposed that B. 

 jacksonianum was a variety of Nassa monile Kiener. f 



I noticed, in the British Museum, an unnamed series from 

 Bombay, which appeared to be more like jacksoniana than any 

 Australian shell. Nassa jacksoniaiia Quoy ct Gaimard, is re- 

 corded from Ceylon by A. W. Langdon.ij: 



Dunker gave good descriptions and figures of his species, and 

 properly compared it with its near relation A. pauperata Lamk. 

 The locality was unknown to him, but it is worth noting that he 

 had a considerable supply of unlocalised Sydney shells for de- 

 scription. In the same paper are, for instance, Buccinum par- 

 vulum,, and B.jonasi. 



Nassa nigella was ascribed by its author to New Zealand, but 

 it has not been recovered there, and is now excluded from the 

 New Zealand catalogue. In London, I examined three shells 

 from the Cuming Collection, probably Reeve's types of nigella, 

 but not so marked; these I found to be a chestnut monochrome 

 of semigranosa, a common form of the Sydney shell. 



The type of Nassa optata Gould, was collected at Sydney by 

 Dr. W. Stimps(m. It has never been figured. In 1863, Gould's 

 collection was transferred to the New York State Museum. On 



♦Kiener, Coq. Viv. Buccinum, 1834, p.92, F1.29, fig.119. 

 tMarrat, Journ. of Conch., i., 1878, p. 374. 

 JLangdon, Journ. of Conch., i., 1875, p.72. 



