The Nautilus. 



Vol. VI. MARCH, 1893. No. 11 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE HELICES OF NEW ZEALAND. 



BY DR. H. V. IHERING. 



Upon this matter Mr. Pilsbry has communicated two papers in 

 the Nautilus for 1892 (pp. 54-57 and 67-69). A curious con- 

 firmation of his observations upon simultaneous discoveries in 

 science is the fact that I published the same ideas as Mr. Pilsbry, 

 at the same time, in a paper finished by me in 1891.^ In that paper, 

 p. 487, I stated that : 



Maoriana Suter is synonymous with Strohila ; 



Phrixgnathus Hutton is synonymous with Pundum. 



And that .these genera, and also the (so-called) Microphysa, and 

 the other allied New Zealand genera are Patulidce. Mr. Pilsbry 

 having made the same disposition of them in his paper, p. 55. 



Mr. Pilsbry, again, (p. 69) has offered the same opinion upon the 

 systematic value of the mucous pore as I have done on p. 401 of my 

 paper, and has even used the same examples, to which I added 

 Zonites with, and Zonitoides without mucous pore. I trust that 

 Messrs Hedley and Suter will recognize from the study of my paper, 

 that the ideas of Semper on the Zonitidce are extremely erroneous ; 

 and that they will therefore agree with Pilsbry and myself, in dis- 

 carding Semper's conclusions. 



1 H. v. Ihering Morphologie und Sj^stematik des Genitalapparates von 

 Helix, Leipzig, 1892. Zeitschr. f. wiss. Zoolog. Bd. 54, p. 386-420 and Taf 

 18, 19. 



