10 RECENT AUSTRALIAN CONCHOLOGY. 



Our coasts have been divided into four sub-regions — 



(1) The Solanderian, from Cape York to Moreton Bay ; 



(2) The Dampierian, from Cape York to Shark Bay ; (3) The 

 Adelaidean, from Shark Bay to the Australian Bight along 

 the south coast of Australia, to Wilson's Promontory, and 

 including the west side of Tasmania ; (4) The Peronian, 

 taking in the east side of Tasmania, Victoria and New South 

 Wales, to Moreton Bay. The first and second of these 

 are subdivisions of the great Indo-Pacific Province, and 

 the third and fourth of the Australian Province. Shells 

 have been assigned to each of the four subprovinces. not 

 always in a tentative way, but from the point of view of 

 the courtiers of King Canute, the creatures being expected 

 to obey the arrangement made for them, however artificial 

 or temporary. 



Some few years ago specimens of a striking species of 

 Littorina were sent down fiom Yeppoon, and were submitted 

 to a speciahst for determination. He decided that they be- 

 longed to an American species from the North Atlantic, 

 and that they could not have come from Keppel Bay, 

 Recently Dr. Hamlyn-Harris visited Dunk Island and picked 

 up a single specimen of the same Littorina on the island 

 beach. While such mistakes are possible, it is well to make 

 our schemes of distribution elastic, until the gaps in our 

 information have been filled in. 



My main purpose in placing this information before 

 the Royal Society of Queensland is to show how little is 

 being done for Queensland conchology within the State, 

 and to point out to possible workers what a wide field 

 and what splendid opportunities lie waiting for them. 

 With the opening of the Queensland University new workers 

 in biology are being added to our present meagre list, and 

 the known species of marine mollusca, numbering close 

 on two thousand five hundred at present, should in the 

 next few decades be raised to three or four thousand. Of 

 known species little has been recorded about the animals 

 themselves, and large stores of material await the coming 

 of the anatomist, the physiologist and the student of lile 

 histories. 



