MADEIRAX GROUP. 157 



nobody should have jet placed upon record its occurrence in 

 Madeira proper, — though Mr. Lowe, at all events, was perfectly 

 well aware that it is far from uncommon near Porto Moniz on 

 the north-western coast of that island. This fact must conse- 

 quently have escaped his memory, when compiling (in 1852) 

 his last enumeration of the land-shells of the archipelago. On 

 the Southern Deserta I have myself met with it sparingly, and I 

 have seen a few other examples which had been obtained from 

 thence by the Baron Paiva, — who, by the bye, has fallen into 

 the unaccountable error of citing it as existing in a subfossil 

 state only on that remote rock.' 



In a subfossil condition the H. abjecta is most abundant in 

 the calcareous deposits of Porto Santo ; and although I have 

 not myself met with it (sub fossilized) except in that island, and 

 have no other evidence of its occurrence elsewhere, it is never- 

 theless recorded by the Baron Paiva to be found sparingly at 

 Cani^al, — which, considering its existence in a recent state on 

 the northern coast of Madeira propet-, is far from unlikely. 



The H. abjecta is an extremely thick and solid little shell, 

 globose-conical in outline, with an open and conspicuous 

 (though by no means large) perforation, and extremely rough 

 in sculpture, — being coarsely granulated all over (though par- 

 ticularly above), and with strong, irregular, subconfluent, 

 transverse costate lines. Its peristome is white, expanded, con- 

 tinuous, and almost circular ; its colour is a brownish-white 

 (sometimes with a few paler radiating lines), passing into a 

 reddish brown ; and its volutions are tumid and prominent, 

 though not exactly (at all events in the normal state) keeled. 

 There is, however, a phasis of the shell (corresponding with the 

 ' /S. candisata^ of this catalogue) in which the form is rather 

 more flattened and the keel is a trifle more expressed ; but it 

 merges so gradually into the other that it can scarcely be looked 

 upon as a permanent ' variety ' (properly so called); and the 

 examples from the Southern Deserta (the ' 7. nesiotes ' of the 

 present list) are, on the average, a little smaller and less conical 

 than the ordinary Madeiran and Porto-Santan ones, somewhat 

 more evidently keeled, and not quite so roughlv granulated. 

 Beyond these two forms (the second of which I should not have 



' I have no evidence that the JI. abjecta has been observed in a suhfoss-il 

 condition at all, hitherto, on the Southern Deserta, though it is extremely 

 prohable that sooner or later it will be found there. For the Baron Paiva "s 

 assertion that it is oitli/ subfossil on that island (' nee recens hodie inventa "), 

 whereas to my own knowledge he procured from thence a certain number of 

 living examples, added to the complete confusion of his idea^ in regarding 

 the Porto-Santan H. commixta as conspecitic with the South- Desertan H. ab- 

 jecta (the former of which he also misquotes as subfossilized I), renders his 

 evidence altogether contradictorv and valueless. 



