122 Lt. -Colonel IJ. H. Godwiii-Austcii on 



Xril. — A Revieio of South- African Lund-Mollusca be- 

 longing to the Family Zonitida?. By Lt. -Colonel H. II. 

 Godwin-Austen, F.R.S. &c. 



[Plates I.-VIl.] 



Introduction. 



Foe some years past Messrs. James Cosmo Melvill and 

 John H. Ponsonby have contributed valuable conchological 

 papers to the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History ' on 

 the South-African Land-Mollusca; their ' Check List of Xoii- 

 Marine Mollusca' is a record of some 21 families, containing 

 57 genera and 367 species from that part of the world. 

 Up to the present time our knowledge of the animals of 

 African land-shells is very limited, and when I received 

 from Mr. Jolm Ponsonby, some years ago, several specimens 

 of a species preserved in spirit from Port Elizabeth, exami- 

 nation showed considerable divergency from the Australian 

 genus Ilelicarion, to which it had been assigned, the type of 

 which is H. cuvieri, Fer. {vide Moll. Ind. vol. i. 1883, p. 146, 

 pi. xli. anatomy of 11. heleua\ G.-A.) *, still more did it 

 diflPer from Indian species which had been placed by various 

 authors in this genus Helicarion. Very soon after ray first 

 examination of the animal sent to me as Helicarion hudsonice 

 it was evident tiiat it had no representatives in the Indian and 

 Malay region, and the genus Feltatus was created for it in 

 1908. 



During the last few years, however, valuable material has 

 been collected and sent home by Messrs. M. Connolly, Henry 

 C. Burnup, J. Crawford, J. Farquhar, and others, while 

 Mr. John Ponsonby has twice visited South xVfrica. In 

 the conchological work, the determination of the species, 

 Messrs. Ponsonby, Connolly, and Burnup have devoted all 

 their knowledge and time, and the two latter gave me 

 many valuable notes on the animals they collected. They 

 have most kindly placed the spirit-specimens in my hands 

 for examination — truly a splendid series of species and 

 varieties from numerous widely separated localities, mostly 

 in a beautiful state of preservation. As this material came 



• This species is tlie same as hyalina, Pfr. Mr. Brazier states that the 

 examples obtained by Godwin-Austen were from a colony introduced 

 from Queensland : Proc. l^inn. Soc. New South Wales, 31st December, 

 1890, " On the Naturalized Forms of Land and Freshwater Mollusca of 

 Australia." See form of the animal, Moll. Ind. i. pi. xli., reproduced from 

 an excellent water-colour drawing from life by Mrs. II. Forde (1870). 



