Tertiary.] PALMONTOLOGY OF VICTORIA. (Mollusca, 
Pirate XIX., Fras. 8, 9. 
LIMOPSIS BELCHERI (Ap. & Rzxnve sp.). 
Descriprion. — Obliquely ovate, subtrigonal, moderately convex; surface 
radiated with very numerous narrow, rough, longitudinal ridges, varying from 
sometimes nearly equal and their own thickness apart, to having from 1 to 3 smaller 
ridges between each pair, which usually increase quickly to the size of the main 
ones, but sometimes continue subordinate as far as the margin; longitudinal ridges, 
crossed by less prominent, less regular, concentric ridges, varying from sometimes 
closer than the radiating ones to three or four times more distant, but usually about 
the same. Triangular cartilage pit large, deep; flat lizamental area small; anterior 
side slightly smaller than the posterior; teeth varying from 5 to 11 on each side, 
usually some intermediate number; inner margin of valves bevelled flat and smooth. 
Greatest length from anterior to posterior side of large typical specimen, 1 inch 
lline; taking this as unity, the ratio of depth from beak to ventral margin is =; ; 
convexity of middle of one valve, ;%%;; hinge-line, 3°,. At about six lines trom 
the beak there are about 7 ridges in the space of 2 lines of the regular size, with, 
in some spaces, a smaller one between the pairs. 
REFERENCE. — Pectunculus Belcheri (Adams and Reeve), Voyage of the 
Samarang, t. 22, fig. 5. 
The Pectunculus Belcheri was dredged up alive from a depth of 
120 fathoms off the Cape of Good Hope by Admiral Belcher’s 
Samarang expedition, and was figured and described briefly by 
Messrs. A. Adams and L. Reeve in the zoology of the voyage. 
As no other specimens, I believe, have been obtained, and so few 
people know the shell, it would have scarcely been possible for any 
geologist to have recognized the fact that it is one of the most 
abundant fossil shells in the Oligocene and Miocene Tertiary rocks 
of Victoria: from any comparison with the brief and insufficient 
description, or from the figure above quoted ; the latter representing 
the shell with the surface covered with the concentric fringes or 
scaly laminz of the very abundant horny periostraca, which quite 
conceals the characteristic sculpturing. Having, however, fortu- 
nately obtained a recent specimen (which is now in the National 
Museum at Melbourne), I can with certainty announce the curious 
fact of one of the few living species in our Tertiary strata being 
an inhabitant, not of our own Bay, but of South African deep 
water. On clearing the periostraca from part of the living specimen, 
I find the sculpturing perfectly identical with that of our fossil 
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