4O R. BULLEN NEWTON on 



vertical ; nucleus smooth, rounded, depressed at summit ; aperture narrow 

 elongately oval, posteriorly sinuate ; labrum strongly plicated within and feebly 

 dentated at inner margin ; columella slightly excavated, twisted in front, 

 covered with a thin callus, spirally striated above but smooth below, bearing 

 a single central plication ; ornamentation consisting of numerous strong spiral 

 striations with intermediate and finer circlet lines, crossed by correspondingly 

 numerous fine and strong longitudinal striations which follow a sinuous course 

 on the last whorl, general surface microscopically nodulato-reticulate. 



DIMENSIONS (an adult example). 



Alt. ... ... ... ... ... 18 millimetres. 



Lat. ... ... ... ... ... 9 



REMARKS. This strikingly ornamented shell exhibits a small almost 

 microscopical sculpture, besides being furnished with a turriculate spiral region 

 which is only half the length of the last whorl, and which somewhat resembles 

 in its dorsal aspect, Bela twricula of recent seas. It is not to be confused, 

 however, with the recent mollusc, on account of its possession of a plicated 

 labrum and an almost hidden central fold on the columella, which are 

 characters suggestive of Cominella and, therefore, of the Family Buccinidae. 

 The sutural shelf is wide and oblique, while the sides of the whorls are tall 

 and more or less vertical ; the spire is of conical shape, whereas the body- 

 whorl is of pyriform contour. With exception of the smooth protoconchal 

 region, the whole of the outer surface is covered with a beautiful reticulate 

 structure, minute nodulations marking the junctions of the numerous transverse 

 and longitudinal striations. A somewhat similarly nodulated structure is 

 associated with Buccinum montense of Briart and Cornet * from the Montian 

 beds (Paleocene) of Belgium, a species regarded by M. Cossmann 2 under 

 Cominella, but which differs from the African shell in having a more produced 

 spire, in the absence of a sutural shelf, and being ornamented by a less 

 complicated system of reticulate sculpture, besides having no posterior 

 sinuation, with which exception the shape of the aperture is in perfect agree- 

 ment with the present shell. The new species is still further removed from 

 some other older Tertiary forms referred by M. Cossmann to the genus 



1 Mem. Cour. Acad. R. Sci. Belgique, 1871, Vol. 36, p. 30, pi. 2, fig. 9. 



2 Essais Paldoconch. Comp. 1901, part 4, p. 150. 



