34 Mr. T. Davidson on Recent Terebvatulfe. 



alluded ; and I am able to attest that its author has spared no 

 trouble in the endeavour to make his work as complete as the 

 material and information in his possession vv^ould permit. It 

 must also be mentioned that Mr. Reeve was far from considering 

 his work to be faultless, and repaired to Paris as soon as his 

 monograph and first paper in the 'Annals' had been published, 

 and there obtained from M. Deshayes some additional informa- 

 tion, which he added to the French edition of his " Revision," &c., 

 recently published in the ' Journal de Conchyliologie.' On his 

 return from Paris, I was likewise able to offer Mr. Reeve some 

 further suggestions, which he was about to publish in the 



* Annals,' when a controversy arose between himself and Prof. 

 Suess touching four points, which have been discussed in the 

 May and June Numbers of the ' Annals.' 



A few words from myself on the subject will, I trust, be suf- 

 ficient to settle the little matter in question, which is but of 

 small importance when viewed in relation to the labours of my 

 two distinguished friends. The first point refers to the so- 

 called Waltonia Valenciennesii ; and I am sorry indeed that my 

 own blunder should have misled Prof. Suess into the belief that 

 the shell in question was referable to the genus Argiope. As 

 far back as the end of 1852, I had acquired the conviction that 

 the shell upon which I had, with an inexcusable haste, fabricated 

 a so-called genus, was an abnormal mutilated specimen of some 

 species in which the loop was broken away, and hence I did not 

 reproduce the so-termed genus in any of the editions of my 



* General Introduction.' I was not aware, while publishing my 

 description of T. Evansii, from a perfect specimen, in the Proc. 

 Zool. Soc. 1853, that it might be the same as W. Valenciennesii; 

 but a subsequent study of several New Zealand specimens had 

 led me to concur with Mr. Reeve that the two shells might be- 

 long to a single species ; and all I can do is to express to my 

 excellent friend Prof. Suess the regret I feel that my incomplete 

 figure of Waltonia should have misled him in this particular. 



I must also clear Prof. Suess from any charge of neglect in 

 connexion with the second and third points, since he followed me 

 in his references. The second relates to a single larger valve of 

 Sowerby's so-termed T. algoensis, which I was not certain about in 

 1852, and which I supposed might perhaps belong to Terebratella, 

 Mr. Reeve subsequently determined it to be a bleached Kraussia 

 rubra ; and it is due to Prof. Suess to observe that he did not 

 reproduce the statement I had made without a caution, for he 

 observes that it is only known by one single larger valve, the 

 generic position of which is therefore rather doubtful. It would 

 have been better had Prof. Suess omitted to include this uncer- 

 tain form in his geographical dissertations ; still the mistake is 



