ON: PARVACOCHLEA- FISCHER, SMITH: 
By C. Heptey, F.L.S. 
(Plate xxv.) 
For an opportunity of dissecting an example of Parmacochlea fischeri, Smith, I 
am indebted to the Committee of Management of the Macleay Museum, who kindly 
sacrificed a specimen of their collection for the purpose. I have further to gratefully 
acknowledge the permission granted to me by the Trustees of the Australian Museum 
to devote the necessary time to the study of this mollusc and to communicate the 
result to the Macleay Memorial Volume. 
The species was first noticed in “An Account of the Land and Freshwater 
Mollusea collected during the Voyage of the ‘Challenger’ from December, 1872, to 
May, 1876,” by Edgar A. Smith, P.Z.S. 1884, p. 273, Pl. xxi. figs. 15-15e. A new 
genus was here created for the reception of a mollusc of which one half-grown 
example was procured at Cape York, Queensland, by the ‘“ Challenger” collectors. 
Since the publication of these figures and description of the external features and 
shell scarcely anything has been added to our stock of information regarding this 
animal, It has, however, been frequently collected by Australian naturalists and 
appears to be a characteristic and fairly common form along the coast of tropical 
Queensland, northward of S. latitude 20°. 
? 
The Macleay Museum representatives were collected at Cairns by Mr. Froggatt. 
Mr. Brazier chronicles it under the name of Vtrzva sp. (P.L.S.N.S.W. (1), Vol. I. 
p- 129, species 64), from No. IIT. Island, Barnard Group, and describes the creature’s 
habits as arboreal. Mr. Beddome also took this species at Cardwell; and it was 
observed by the writer at the Bloomfield River, near Cooktown. 
At the close of the briefest summary of the species (Manual of Conchology, 
Ser. 2, Vol. I. p. 167) Tryon remarks, “ Vztvina australis, Reeve, is suspiciously like 
this species.” On comparing V. australis, as portrayed in the “ Conchologica 
Iconica,” Vol. XITI., Article “Vetrina,” Pl. x. fig. 70, with the figures 15b and 15¢ of 
Pl. xxi. P.Z.S. 1884, representing the shell of P. fischeri, no suspicious likeness, but 
a very tangible distinction, presents itself to me. 
V. australis is not at present known to inhabit Australia on any other authority 
than that of Cuming, whose inaccuracy in such matters was proverbial. 
BB 
