LOWER CRETACEOUS FOSSILS— ETHERIDGE. 165 



difference between these dwarfed and little sculptured shells with 

 comparatively simple sutures and the gigantic highly ornamented 

 forms with abundantly ramified sutures is so marked that the 

 bestowal of a subgeneric appellation seems perfectly just. 



Messrs. Sarasin and Schondelmayer, 5 ° on the contrary, consider 

 Uhlig's Leptoceras to be based on fragments of much larger shells 

 possessing a regular spiral, and terminal portions straight or 

 curved. 



We have in our Cretaceous one form that in all probability 

 conforms to Uhlig's definition. 



Leptoceras (?) edkinsi, Eth.jH. 



Crioceras edkinsi, Eth. fil., G-eol. Pal. Q'land, etc., 1892, p. 502, 

 pi xxx., figs. 8, 9. 



Sp. Chars. — Shell small, not exceeding three-quarters of an 

 inch in diameter, open-coiled. Whorls not more than one and a 

 half; shaft straight; venter narrow, convex; abdominal angles 

 rounded, defined by small nodes ; dorsum flattened and very 

 feebly costate; impressed zone none; tlanks very gently rounded, 

 almost flat; section longitudinally oval. Costa- simple, obtusely 

 angular, equidistant ribs, neither fasciculate, bifurcate, nor inter- 

 polate, but occasionally one becoming larger than the others ; on 

 the venter bent forwards, and steep-faced in that direction ; on 

 the dorsum faint but apparently bent forwards also; on the flanks 

 oblique or here and there sigmoidal. Tubercles small, one row- 

 on each side the middle line of the venter, either on each costa 

 or with intervening barren costse. 



Obs.— In 1892 I wrote as follows of this little shell : — " As 

 the examples are numerous, and constant in their characters, they 

 can only be regarded as adult individuals, and as such are 

 certainly new to the Cretaceous rocks of Queensland ;" this still 

 holds good. It is a small and pretty species, and needs com- 

 parison only with some of the small forms from the Point Charles 

 beds of Port Darwin. 



Small more or less curved fragments 31 occur in the Point 

 Charles beds with narrow rounded venters, and simple and equal 

 costa?, with one row of nodes along each abdominal angle and on 

 each alternate rib ; there is a community of appearance between 

 these and L. edkinsi. 



Loc. — Wells (at 230 ft.) seven miles east of Mount Cornish 

 Homestead, near Muttaburra, Central Queensland [G.S.Q.l. 



50 8arasin and Schondelmayer — Mem. Soc. Pal. Suisse, xxix., 1902, p. 97. 

 5i Etheridge— Mem. Roy. Soc. S. Austr., ii., 1, 1902, p. 46, pi. vii., figs. 

 14, 15; S. Austr. Pari. Papers, 1907 (Suppl. to No. 55), 1906, p. 16. 



