Fossil Fauna, Table Cape Beds, Tasmania. 99 



tively long, bearing a little below the middle of the aperture 

 three unequally-sized oblique plaits, the anterior of which is the 

 strongest. Earliest portion of spire-whorl at lirst only finely 

 transversely striate, with very faint spiral threads, then bears 

 fine and close transverse ridges or costte, which become coarser 

 and more nodulose in appearance anteriorly. From this onwards 

 the whorls are strongly nodulose at the medial angulation, the 

 nodules being closer and more numerous on the posterior whorls, 

 where they number about twelve or fourteen, decreasing 

 anteriorly, the body-whorl having only nine ; with the decrease 

 in number there is, however, a marked increase in strength and 

 prominence. The nodulations are bluntly I'ounded, and, as a 

 rule, slightly more abrupt on their right face than on the left, 

 and on the penultimate and earlier part of the body-whorls are 

 extended anteriorly into distinct bluntly rounded, faintly arching 

 costfe, the last four nodules of the body-whorl not being thus 

 extended. The whorls are also traversed by fine and close, yet 

 distinct, transverse striae and lines of growth, and are further 

 ornamented by numerous (about twenty and upwards on the 

 earlier whorls, increasing in number anteriorly) tine spiral threads 

 with shallow, flat, intermediate furrows. The spiral threads tend 

 to become obsolete on the anterior slope, being entirely absent 

 from this part of the body-whorl, though still discernible on the 

 posterior slope. 



Dimensions. — Length (pullus and anterior end of canal in- 

 complete), 100 mm ; breadth, 60 mm. ; length of aperture 

 (incomplete), 66 mm. ; breadth of aperture, 25 mm. In anotlier 

 specimen the pullus is 5 mm. high and 7 mm. broad. 



Locality. — Eocene beds of Table Cape, Tasmania. One ex- 

 ample (type). Also from the eocene clays of Curlewis, Bellarine 

 Peninsula, Victoria. 



Observations. — This species shows so many characteristic fea- 

 tures of its own that it is at once separable from all our hitherto 

 described fossil species, and I am unacquainted with any recent 

 form to which it shows any close resemblance. Amongst our 

 fossil species a certain amount of aflSnity may perhaps be made 

 out with V. siephensi, Johnston ; but from this it diff"ers particu- 

 larly on account of its smaller pullus, its broader form, different 

 shaped whorls, the prominent nodules at the angulation, and also 



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