A CLASSIFIED LIST OF THE HELICOID LAND 

 SHELLS OF ASIA. 



(PART V*) 



BY G. K. GUDE, F.Z.S. 



xii. FURTHER INDIA (not including Burma). 



This region is very rich in niolhiscan life, and altliough many tracts 

 remain to be explored, our knowledge of its fauna is sufhciently advanced 

 to warrant some generalisations. The most salient feature, perhaps, 

 is the appearance oi Amphidromus, whose headquarters are in the Malay 

 Archipelago, and many of Avhose species are cliaracterised by great 

 beauty of colour and marking. Other links with the Malaysian fauna 

 are Cldoritis and Xesta. Neoce.folis, represented by three species, is 

 peculiar to Tonkin. Ganesella, wliich extends to India, Burma, China, and 

 Japan on the one hand, and to the Malay and Philippine Arcliipelagoes 

 on the other, here produces a number of keeled forms. Plecfopylis is 

 well represented in Tonkin, producing no less than twenty .species, four 

 of which belong to the section Sinicola, hitherto believed to be exclu- 

 sively Chinese. With the exception of Plectoy.ylis laornonfana, Pfr., 

 found in Laos, the genus is absent in the other divisions of this region. 

 Ilpmiplecfa has here gigantic representatives in //. (Jisfinrfa, II. neiitvni(i<, 

 and the beautiful and rare H. cnmbojiensis. 



Turning to the history of our knowledge of the region we find that 

 the '■ Bonite," in 18.')7, touched at Touran, in Annam, whence Eydoux 

 and Souleyet described a number of .species in tlie Zoological portion of 

 tlie results of the voyage in 1852. Tlie American missionary, E. House, 

 was the first to procure land shells of undoubted Siamese origin, and 

 these were described by Redfield and Haines.'^' The French traveller 

 jNIouhot, who explored Laos and Cambodia, between 1858 and 18G0, 

 collected tliere a number of land shells, which were sent to London, and 

 described by Pfeiffer ; some of the.se were figured in Mouliot's posthu- 

 mous work published in 1804. Several Siamese shells .sent to the 

 British Museum by Sir J. Bowring and Sir R. Schomburgk, were des- 

 cribed by Professor von Martens, '-' who himself, in 18G1, visited Siam 

 with the Prussian Expedition to Eastern Asia, and described his finds in 

 tlie publication of the expedition. 



• See ante. vol. ix, p. 112. 



■". Ann. Lyceum Nat. Hist., New York, 1853-55. 



=. Proe. Zool. Soc, 1860. 



