OBSERVATIONS on a CYTHEREA, pound in BASS 



STRAITS, WITH LIGHT CHESTNUT RAYS of 



COLOUR. 



[Cytherea Diemene7isis, Hanley, not in question.] 



By Dr. James C. Cox, M.D., F.L.S., &c. 



Mr. J. E. Gray, of the British Museum, in 1827 described a 

 Cytherea Kingii \n the Appendix to Captain Philip P. King's 

 " Narrative of a Survey of the Coasts of Australia,'' dated 1827, 

 Vol. II., Appendix Mollusca, p. 47-t. It was not figured at 

 the time. Gray's description of the specimen given to the 

 Museum by Captain King is : — "One inch long and eight-tenths 

 of an inch high ; shell ovate, heart-shaped, white or pale brown, 

 with darker brown rays, each foimed of several narrow lines ; 

 the umbones white, the edge (juite entire ; the lunule lanceolate, 

 heart-shaped, obscurely defined, the centre rather prominent ; 

 inside white ; the hinge margin rather broad." He says the 

 shell is very like Cytherea Loeta. No habitat is given, but can 

 any one doubt that King obtained this shell in Bass Straits, of 

 which he made the survey ; Philip and King's Islands being 

 called after him. King never was at Nicobar Island, where 

 Romer, in his Monograph of the sub-genus Cytherea of Lamk., 

 says that C. Kingii comes from ; nor was he in the West 

 Indies, or at Tihiti. I am assured of this by his son, the Hon. 

 Philip Gidley King, now in Sydney. But, if Captain King had 

 been there, it is not without record that mistakes were made in 

 those early expeditions as to habitats. We have two main facts 

 in the question : one is that the shell was collected by King, and 

 the other is that King surveyed the coast on which we now find 

 a shell corresponding to Grays description almost in every way. 



Dione Kingii, Gray. In Deshayes' Catalogue of the Conchi- 

 fera or Bivalve Shells in the Collection of the British Museum, 

 1853, Part I, p. 69, a shell under this name is given, Deshayes 

 giving as a habitat Nicobar Islaiid. Deshayes refers to the 

 author of the species as given in Woods' Index Testaceologicus 

 with Supplement by Sylvanus Hanley, dated 18.56, p. 20.3, 

 species 9, Venus, Supplement. Now Hanley in this Supplement 

 places the letters I.T. after Gray's name as author ; this signifies 

 that the name given to the shell figured was given by Gray, 



