30 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



MOLLUSCA. 



The small collection of shells gathered by Mr. Le Souef con- 

 tained two species of great interest — a land shell new to science, 

 and a freshwater shell not before recorded from Australia. The 

 remainder are well known and call for no remarks. 



Land Shell. — Papuind cerea, Hedley, n. sp. Shell thin, trans- 

 lucent ; contour trochoidal. Colour waxen white, becoming 

 yellowish on the third and fourth whorls, encircled below the 

 suture by an opaque white thread, 

 nowhere are translucent lines or spaces 

 visible. Sculpture. — Surface of a waxen 

 polish ; transverse growth lines can 

 be detected by the unaided eye, and 

 spiral grooves, almost effaced above 

 but plainer on the base, may be deciphered with a lens. Whorls 

 5^, flattened, regularly increasing, the last constituting five-eighths 

 of the shell's height, angled at the periphery, descending con- 

 siderably and abruptly at the aperture, gibbous at the point of 

 flexure. Suture impressed ; aperture very oblique, anterior 

 margin waved ; columella oblique, wide, extending nearly to the 

 angle of the aperture, subtruncate below. A thin transparent 

 shining callus extends over the imperforate axis to the insertion of 

 the anterior margin of the lip. Height, i^}4, rnaj. diam. 16, min. 

 diam. 14 mm. 



Habitat. — One specimen occurred to Mr. Le Souef in a scrub on 

 a coast range near the Bloomfield River, about two miles inland, just 

 at the back of Cedar Bay, North Queensland. The accompany- 

 ing figure, of the natural size, was drawn by the writer from the 

 type ; it shows the shell as viewed from the front and the side. 



Type in the Australian Museum. 



Other Australian Papuina are poiretiana, Pfeiffer, Macgillivrayi, 

 Forbes, Bidwilli, Pfeiffer, fucata, Pfeiffer, conscendens, Cox, and 

 folicola, Hedley (= Bidivilli, Cox, not of Pfeiffer). From these 

 and from the foreign members of the genus the novelty is very 

 distinct. To say that it represents a line of differentiation midway 

 between Macgillivrayi and conscendens would be perhaps the best 

 guess at its systematic position. To match the blade-like exten- 

 sion of the columella we should have to seek till in the Solomons 

 we found its analogue in ambrosia ; the puffed ridge where 

 the last whorl commences to descend recalls Biduilli ; the 

 wave of the anterior lip, more developed in Macgillivrayi and 

 Tayloriana, culminates in the fang of naso ; these features, and the 

 gloss and hue of wax, which suggested the specific name, afford a 

 ready recognition to the newest Papuina. 



Freshwater Shells, from the Bloomfield River. — Neritina 

 variegata, Lesson. Two adult and, except as to their eroded 



