194 Prof. M‘Coy on the Recent Zoology 
scalaris (M‘Coy), which so completely resembles the Volutilites 
scalaris, equally common in the Isle of Wight and Hampshire 
cliff beds, that, on comparing specimens from the two localities, 
the nicest eye could scarcely find character for a variety, except 
the same generic difference of the acute regular tip to the spire 
in the European, and the obtuse mammillary tip in the Austra- 
lian shell ; and so with several others. None of these resemble 
living species, and they are accompanied by many others (as V. 
Hannafordi and V. macroptera, M‘Coy) equally removed from 
any known living or fossil ones. In the same beds species of 
Cyprea are common, of the most extravagant forms when com- 
pared with any known living or fossil types. Thus one species, 
the Cyprea gastroplax (M‘Coy), has the underside dilated into 
a flat circular plate between three and four inches in diameter. 
Another huge species, the Cyprea gigas (M‘Coy), is commonly 
eight or nine inches in length, far exceeding any living species 
in size. Other Gasteropods are equally remarkable for repre- 
senting fossil European species of the same age: thus the com- 
mon Cassidaria depressa of the German Lower Miocene beds is 
so closely imitated by the C. reticulospira (M‘Coy) in the Vic- 
torian strata, that the reticulation of the extreme apex of the 
spire is almost the only character for distinction. The common 
Trivia avellana of the European strata is represented by an 
equally common curiously similar species, the 7. avellanoides 
(M‘Coy). Amongst the singular forms in these Australian Ter- 
tiary beds, recalling Oolitic European ones, is a Plewrotomaria 
(P. australis, M‘Coy) as large as the Mesozoic P. anglica, and 
a concentrically costated Zrigonia (T. semiundulata, M‘Coy) 
strongly contrasting with the radiated species which are alone 
found living now. The old notion, found in many books, that 
the marine Oolitic fauna, as well as the terrestrial, exists still in 
Australia in the modern times, has no definite foundation when - 
closely examined. The genus Zrigonia has often been quoted 
as a case in point of a genus common in old-world Mesozoic 
formations, not occurring in the Tertiaries, but found living in 
Australian waters. I have now described two Tertiary Australian 
abundant species, the above one, and a radiated species, the 7. 
acuticostata (M‘Coy), filling up the geological gap in the range 
in time of the genus, yet both perfectly distinct specifically from 
the four recent ones. 
With these strange forms are abundance of a very small per- 
centage of recent species, none of which, however, occur in 
Victorian waters, but in warmer seas, thus following the rule in 
this respect of recent species in Miocene strata in Europe being 
usually recent in some warmer latitude. All our evidence, in 
fact, goes to show that there was no glacial period in Victoria 
