194 Prof. M'Coy on the Recent Zoology 



scalnris (M'Coy), which so completely resembles the Volutilites 

 scalaris, equally common in the Isle of Wight and Hampshire 

 cliiF beds, that, ou comparing specimens from the two localities, 

 the nicest eye could scarcely find character for a variety, except 

 the same generic difference of the acute regular tip to the spire 

 in the European, and the obtuse mammillary tip in the Austra- 

 lian shell j and so with several others. None of these resemble 

 living species, and they are accompanied by many others (as V. 

 Hannafordi and V. macroptera, M'Coy) equally removed from 

 any known living or fossil ones. In the same beds species of 

 Cijpriea are common, of the most extravagant forms when com- 

 pared with any known living or fossil types. Thus one species, 

 the Cyprcea gastroplax (M'Coy), has the underside dilated into 

 a flat circular plate between three and four inches in diameter. 

 Another huge species, the Cypraa gigas (M'Coy), is commonly 

 eight or nine inches in length, far exceeding any living species 

 in size. Other Gasteropods are equally remarkable for repre- 

 senting fossil European species of the same age : thus the com- 

 mon Cassidaria depressa of the German Lower Miocene beds is 

 so closely imitated by the C. reticulospira (M'Coy) in the Vic- 

 torian strata, that the reticulation of the extreme apex of the 

 spire is almost the only character for distinction. The common 

 Trivia aveliana of the European strata is represented by an 

 equally common curiously similar species, the T. avellanuides 

 (M'Coy). Amongst the singular forms in these Australian Ter- 

 tiary beds, recalling Oolitic European ones, is a Fleurotomaria 

 (P. australis, M'Coy) as large as the Mesozoic P. anglica, and 

 a concentrically costated Trigonia {T. semiundulata, M'Coy) 

 strongly contrasting with the radiated species which are alone 

 found living now. The old notion, found in many books, that 

 the marine Oolitic fauna, as well as the terrestrial, exists still in 

 Australia in the modern times, has no definite foundation when 

 closely examined. The genus Trigonia has often been quoted 

 as a case in point of a genus common in old-world Mesozoic 

 formations, not occurring in the Tertiaries, but found living in 

 Australian waters. I have now described two Tertiai'y Australian 

 abundant species, the above one, and a radiated species, the T. 

 acuticostata (M'Coy), filling up the geological gap in the range 

 in time of the genus, yet both perfectly distinct specifically from 

 the four recent ones. 



With these strange forms are abundance of a very small per- 

 centage of recent species, none of which, however, occur in 

 Victorian waters, but in warmer seas, thus following the rule in 

 this respect of recent species in Miocene strata in Europe being 

 usually recent in some warmer latitude. All our evidence, in 

 fact, goes to show that there was no glacial period in Victoria 



