NOTES. 51 



Cooke ; but it is important in connection with the animal's liabits, which 

 have been made the subject of much fanciful exaggeration, as it points to the 

 more or less automatic capture of the prey, the details of which are worked 

 out in a paper by the present writer.* (Reference given by Mr. Cooke.) 



It is, of course, very difficult to reproduce, in the open, conditions which 

 are to be met with underground, but it seems fairly certain, from the various 

 observations mada during the last 150 years, that Tistacdla, as a rule, seizes 

 the earth-worm by the anterior end (Figs. 4 and 4a), a fact which might also 

 be surmised from the slug's habit of taking up its position in the burrows of 

 its prey. Only in special cases, therefore, is another part of the victim's 

 body impaled, as apparently happened in Mr. Butterell's somewhat artificial 

 e.xperiment where he held the worm, and in which the head of the latter 

 " was rejected." Again, in life, apparently, the odontophore cannot be 

 extruded unless the animal be itself contracted (Fig. 3), and swallowing is not 

 so much effected by the withdrawal of the radula after the prey is transfixed 

 by the barbed teeth with which it is beset (Figs. 4a and 6), as by the re-exten- 

 sion of the slug, which literally " puts itself outside " of its struggling repast 

 (Fig. 5)- 



FloruE 20. Tes/arella haHo/ida, Drap protnidingC?) its pliarynx (ph.) and radula (i) ; oe., 

 oesophagus ; p.o., puhnonary orifice ; sh., shell ; t., tentacles (after Lacaze-Duthiers). 



With respect to the figure after Lacaze-Duthiers — the original one 

 represents a specimen which is by no means normal, being probably taken 

 from a drowned example, or one that was at least "sick unto death;" it is, 

 moreover, described by Lacaze-Duthiers as one shewing the buccal mass 

 " evagine," which cannot here be rightly construed into " protruding its 

 pharyx and radula." In fact. Fig. 20, as it stands in the Cambridge Natural 

 History, is calculated to give a very false impression as to the whereabouts of 

 the oesophagus when the animal is feeding, in connection with which organ 

 the only reference to the figure is made. 



A reduced facsimile of the original drawings from nature illustrating the 

 writer's paper already alluded to is reprinted from an abstract of the same 

 in the " Essex Natiira!/st,"f through the kindness of the Editor of that 

 publication. Wilfred Mark Webb. 



On the specific identity of Papuina hedleyi, Smith, and P. 

 canefriana (Dohrn. MSS.), Kobelt. — At the suggestion of Mr. Hedley, 

 I have examined the type of Mr. Sinith's species and compared it with the 

 figure and description given by Dr. Kobelt (Conch. Cab., Helix, Lief. 410, 

 1894, p. 708, pi. 202, figs. I and 2), and can only come to the conclusion that 

 they are slightly varying forms of the same species. 



E. R. Sykes. 



The Larval Oyster. — At a recent meeting of the Malacological Society, 

 Mr. Martin F. Woodward read a note on the larval oyster, in which he gave 

 it as his opinion that the structure alluded to as a probable posterior adductor 

 in the last number of this Journal has an epiblastic origin, and represents the 

 beginning of the \-isceral nerve ganglion. 



* Wilfred Mark Webb — " On the manner of feeding in Teslacella sciitti/iiiii." 



Zool., vol. xvii., 1893, pp. 28i-2tig, PI. I. 

 t Testacdla scutulum, Sowerby. Essex Nat., vol. vii., 1803, pp. 120-123. 



