398 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 
pressure of current Museum duties has operated unfavourably on 
my report. Various inquiries on anatomy and other related 
matters have been perforce omitted. With the exception of a 
sketch of the geographical distribution I have unwillingly restricted 
myself to the mere systematic treatment of the species. 
A superficial reader might seize on the fact that many new 
species are described as new in the following pages, and with a 
show of reason deduce that so great a proportion of novelties 
indicate'a very peculiar and endemic fauna. This would however 
be a mistaken impression. Few realise how exceeding rich the 
fauna of the tropical Pacific is, or how poor our knowledge thereof. 
Probably, except in New Caledonia, a capable collector would 
obtain at least one shell new to science in a day’s work on any 
beach in the South Pacific. Fischer's estimate that the Indo- 
Pacific Province contains five or six thousand marine mollusca,* 
is certainly below the mark. 
For the purpose of comparison the Funafuti fauna must be 
divided into large conspicuous, and small inconspicuous shells. 
The distribution already ascertained for conspicuous genera like 
Cypraea will be paralleled, as knowledge increases, for inconspicu- 
ous genera like Caecum. Thus I anticipate the discovery in the 
western continental islands of every minute species I have 
described as new from Funafuti. The range of all the species 
mentioned is given for the South Pacific as completely as oppor- 
tunity permitted. A discussion of the data collected is postponed 
‘to the concluding pages of this Memoir. 
The study of the mollusca of the Pacific is attended with 
peculiar difficulty. Asa result of the superior energy of the 
British in exploration, commerce and missionary enterprise in the 
Pacific, the vast majority of the mollusca of this region have, from 
the time of Captain Cook to the present day, been first examined 
in London. The writers who have dealt with them, Adams Bros., 
Hinds, Reeve, the Sowerbys, Smith, Melvill, and others, have 
treated them uniformly on the model and method of Lamarck ; it 
will be convenient to call this group of authors the ‘ London 
School.” A brilliant exception to the work of British writers is 
the superb Memoir by Boog Watson on the Gasteropoda collected 
‘by the Challenger Expedition. 
As a consequence of the devotion of the London School to the 
study of the Pacific fauna, we have a great mass of involved 
synonomy, inadequate descriptions, poor figures or none, crude 
classification and total neglect of soft anatomy, The smaller 
portion of this fauna which has gone to Paris has generally been 
well figured, and a fraction which has fallen into the hands of 
* Fischer—Man. de Conch. 1887, p. 157. 
