On new S/jecies 0/ Anipclitii dnd Tiopilopliora. M.) 



von Heycleii's name, tliis would probably be the best way of 

 doing it rather than to upset the well-established g(inus 

 Nothrus ; but it is doubtful whether it is necessary, because 

 von lley den's work was so extraordinary that it can hardly 

 be looked upon as a scientific publication at all ; some 

 eminent modern acarologists have agreed not to pay any 

 attention to new names contained in it unless they have b^on 

 adopted by some later writer who has practically made tiieui 

 his own — so many 01 the genera being mere nomina nuda, or 

 based upon types which were so, never having been described 

 at all. Von lleyden probably intended to have described 

 them in some later work, an intention which he did not 

 carry out. 



Dr. Ouderaans at the end of his paper gives a list of what 

 he calls the types of the genera; I fancy that tlie authors of 

 the genera would, in many cases, have been somewhat 

 astonished to be informed that these were their types. So 

 far as 1 understand it. Dr. Oadeinans considers that when a 

 zoologist writes of an existing genus and gives any new 

 species he creates a new genus which fails for want of priority, 

 but of which his first-named species is the type ; if this be 

 his view, I am not able to agree with him. 



Lll. — Descriptions of new Species 0/ Ampelita and Tropido- 

 phora//-o«i Madagascar . By HuGH FuLTOX. 



AmpeJita subnigra, sp. n. 



Shell widely and deeply umbilicated, lenticular, solid ; 

 ujtper whorls light to very dark reddish brown below, polished, 

 closely and irregularly obliquely striated above and below, 

 underside of last whorl with indistinct, microscopic, spiral 

 striaj; embryonic portion consisting of two whorls, tlie tirst 

 almost smooth; whorls 4\, moderately convex, regularly 

 increasing, the last acutely carinate, and descending very 

 slightly ; aperture subovate, very oblique, leaden-bluish 

 cohnir within ; peristome narrowly expanded, polished, black- 

 ish brown, upper margin almost straight, with an angle where 

 it joins the basal margin at the periphery, the basal and 

 columellar margins regularly curved, margins connected by 

 an extremely thin transparent callus. 



Alt. Ifi, maj. diam. -iO millim. 



Hah. Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. 



The most nearly allied species known to me is .4. loucou- 

 heeiisisj Crosse, which is similar in colour and form, but has 

 not the angular peristome of A. s(d>ni(/ra, which is also more 



