288 



NOTES ON THE MOLLUSC PALUDESTRINA 

 JENKINSI, Smith, IN ESSEX AND ELSE- 

 WHERE. 



By A. S. KENN ARD, Member of the Malacological Society, and B. B. WOODWARD, F.L.S.,&c. 



\Rcad December Stli, 19U0.] 



When in 1889 ' Mr. E. A. Smith described the above 

 species as new to science, considerable interest was aroused by 

 it. That a species should exist in such numbers close to London 

 and yet be unrecorded was indeed remarkable.- To have been 

 the first to notice it was at once claimed by more than one 

 person, whilst others declared it to be only a variety of 

 P. ventvosa (Mont.), and a third opinion was hazarded that it 

 was a foreign species which had been recently introduced. 



In 1892 ^ one of us described and figured the radula of 

 P.jcnhinsi and showed its specific distinctness from P. ventrosa. 



Mr. A. J. Jenkins, after whom the shell is named, informs 

 us that he first noticed the species at East Greenwich in 1883, 

 but, as we shall see later, it was found in the Thames marshes at 

 least twenty-five )'ears before. 



In 1886 Mr. G. Sherriff Tye had examples sent to him 

 by the late Miss E. R. Fairbrass from between Deal and Sand- 

 wich, perhaps from the same locality whence Mr. L. E. 

 Adams obtained his examples in i8gi. It has since been 

 found abundantly in England at Topsham, Lewes, Short 

 Heath (near Dudley), near Middlesbrough and Droylsden 

 (Lancashire). Mr. L. E. Adams has obtained a single dead 

 example at Hythe and Mr. C. Oldham informs me that he has 

 recently found it in abundance in the Trent and Mersey Canal 

 near Sandbach (Cheshire), and a few immature examples in the 

 Shropshire Union Canal, near Beeston Castle. In Ireland, 

 through the researches of Mr. R. Welch, of Belfast, it has been 



1 " Notes on British H ydrobiw vi'iih description of a supposed new species." Journal oj 

 Conchology, vol. vi. (T889), pp. 142-5. 



2 Another new and closely allied form has just been found at Dukintield, Lancashire, 

 and described by Mr. E. A. Smith under the name of I'ahidcstnna taylori in the Ann. and 

 Mag Nat. Hist., ser. vii , vol. vii., p. igi. Both forms have their nearest allies in Tasmanian 

 species. 



3 B. B. Woodward. "On the Radula of Faludcstrina jenkinsi. Smith, and that of 

 P. ventrosa, Mont." .Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Ser. vi., vol. ix. (1892), 

 pp. 376-8. 



