106 PEOCEEDINGS OF THE MALACOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



only necessary to point to the map of Africa, from Morocco and the 

 mouth of the Orange River, and from Lorenzo Marques to Cape 

 Guardafui, or to the coast of China from the mouth of the Melvong 

 to Korea, to show that at present our knowledge is limited to the 

 species which have been collected at a few isolated spots, while no 

 systematic exploration worth the name has as yet taken place. One 

 is not without the hope that before long expeditions will be equipped 

 with the sole object of exploring the fauna of certain definite pieces 

 of coastline, more particularly those where geographical and faunistic 

 regions, as at present understood, tend to merge into one another — 

 the marchlands of adjacent kingdoms. 



P. Fischer defines ^ the Lusitanian region as comprising the 

 Atlantic coasts of France, Spain, and Portugal, the Mediterranean, 

 the North-West African coast from Tangier to Cape Juby, and the 

 Azores, Madeira, and Canary groups. Paul Pallary, after remarking* 

 that recent researches tend to show that even the Mediterranean 

 fauna is not yet completely known, continues as follows: "Si done 

 la faune d'une mer entouree de pays civilises et d'une etendre 

 relativement restreinte est encore incompletement etudiee, quoi de 

 surprenant que nous ne sachions que bien pen de chose sur celle 

 des cotes occidentales de I'Afrique?" And he goes on to say that 

 he found, between Cape Spartel and Mogador, Patella compressa, 

 three species of Yetns, four of Marginella, including glabella, monilis, 

 and cornea, and a Pnsionella, all species characteristic of the Senegalian 

 fauna, and never before recorded from so high a latitude. Already 

 in the Canaries a considerable proportion of equatorial species occur, 

 and he thinks that the tropical fauna comes up very high on the 

 west coast of Africa, even reaching the Algerian coast, so that the 

 limits of the old Lusitanian province or region must be modified 

 and made to lie much further north, at least as far as the Straits 

 of Gibraltar. And when one adds that the proposal implies the 

 addition of at least 800 miles of coastline to the Senegalian region, 

 it is quite clear that further exploration of obscure and remote 

 coast - lands promises to provide us with plenty of material for 

 discussion. 



Conversely, M. Ph. Dautzenberg, remarking^ on the molluscau 

 fauna of the inhospitable coast between the bay of Levrier and Senegal 

 (N. lat. 21°-16°), says that the proportion of ' Mediterranean' species 

 wliich spread along the western coast of Africa is greater than has 

 been supposed. Thus, in the collection under review, of ninety-eight 

 Mediterranean species which occur, fifty-eight live in the Cape Blanco 

 seas and thirty-four on the coasts of Mauretania and Senegal. 



The problems involved are not of a simple nature, and may be 

 complicated by all manner of interferences on Nature's side. As an 



^ Man. de Conch., p. 143. 



- Bull. Sci. France Belgique, 'ol. xli, pp. 421-.'j, 1907. 



^ "Sur les MoUusques marins provenant des campagnes scientifiques de 



M. A. Gruvel en Afrique occidentale, 1906-9 " : Comp. Eend. Acad. Sci., 



vol. cxlix, pp. 74-5-6, 1909. 



