SCIENTIFIC RESULTS 



OF 



THE SECOND YARKAND MISSION. 



MOLLUSCA. 



BY GEOFFREY NEVILL, C.M.Z.S. 



I. MOLLUSCA FROM EASTERN TURKESTAN AND LADA'K. 



following is a list of the mollusca obtained by the late Dr. Stoliczka in Central Asia and 

 JL Ladak, while attached as naturalist to the second embassy to Yarkand ; Dr. Stoliczka 

 also collected a considerable number of shells in Kashmir and its neighbourhood ; as, however, 

 nearly, if not all, the land mollusca from those parts belong to our Indian fauna proper, 

 I have thought it best to give a separate list of them. As was to be expected, the mollus- 

 cous fauna of Yarkand proves to be exceedingly poor and entirely European in its affinities ; 

 the freshwater shells, indeed, are either identical with, or most closely allied to, well-known 

 European forms ; very nearly all the species are recorded from Turkestan in the account of the 

 Mollusca of Fedschenko's ' Reise.' I take this opportunity of acknowledging the great obliga- 

 tion I am under to Dr. E. von Martens, not only for a copy of the above work, of which he is 

 the author, but also for a critical opinion on the species here recorded, of which I have availed 

 myself in several instances. The only striking novelty is the new Succinea martensiana : its 

 thickness and opaqueness of texture and its vivid orange-coloured aperture mu ie it one of the 

 most interesting and peculiar forms of the genus. It is interesting to find such characteristic 

 shells as Helix phceozona and H. plectotropis extending southwards from Kokand and the 

 Tian Shan Range as far as Sasak Taka ; even more remarkable are the new localities for Pupa, 

 cristata, originally found in the SSarafshan Valley ; the absence of the genus Hydrobia from 

 Dr. Stoliczka's collection strikes me as noteworthy, especially as no species of Valvata, on the 

 other hand, is recorded by von Martens from Turkestan. The most interesting fact, however, 

 seems to me to be the entire disappearance, on leaving Sonamarg on the confines of Kashmir, 

 of the characteristic Indo-Malayan genus Nanina, which re-appears again (with two species of 

 the sub-genus Macrochlamys) in the Sarafshan Valley ; the same is also the case with species 

 of Buliminus (Napceus), Parmacella, and Limax (?) ; the two last, however, belong to the 

 European fauna and species of them are mere stragglers on the extreme north-west confines 

 of India. Stoliczka remarks that the shells recorded as found in the Pankong Lake were 

 taken from a " stratified shaly and sandy deposit on the west side of the Pankong plain, about 

 50 feet above the level of the present edge of the water and about two miles distant from it ; 



