209 



Ancillaria australis. 



A. australis of Tenison-Woods, from the Table C.ii'e beds, 

 is certainly not Sowerby's species of that name. It should 

 bear the cognomen A. mucronata, under which it is catalogued 

 as a Table Gape fossil, by Tenison-Woods, in Proc. Roy. Soc, 

 Tasmania, for 1875, p. 17, and as " one of the very few forms 

 surviving in the present series," but in his census of the 

 Marine Shells of Tasmania, loc. cit., 1878, p. 30, he corrects 

 that statement, remarking that " A. mucronata, Sowerby, in 

 Thes. Gonch., Anc, p. 63, t. 211, fig. 11, is believed to have 

 been described from the Lower Gainozoic beds at Table Gape. 

 . . . Mr. Legrand informs me that he has never found it 

 but as a fossil." 



The differences between A. australis and A. mucronata are 

 apparently trifling, but they are constant. Comparing them 

 at the size represented by a length of about 25 millimetres : — 

 A. mucronata has an ovate outline of an uniform width 

 throughout, gradually tapering to a subtruncate mammillary 

 apex ; the pullus is concentrically costate-granulate. In 

 A. australis the outline is ovate-fusiform, rapidly tapering 

 to a subacute apex ; the last whorl is relatively much 

 enlai'ged. With a length of about 40 millimetres the 

 differences are not so obvious, though A. mucronata is a 

 narrower shell and shows traces of a mucronate apex. 



Here are the various dimensions in millimetres of a large 

 example of each species : — 



River Murray Gliffs, near Morgan, South Australia, B. Tate. 



Trivia Europ^a, 



Believed by Tenison-Woods to occur at Table Gape as a 

 fossil (loc. cit., 1877). This identification is based upon 

 young or dwarfed examples of the widely distributed Austra- 

 lian fossil, T. avellanoicles, McCoy — the distinctive characters 

 of which have been fully pointed out by the author of the 

 species in his definition of it. Most particularly are the ribs 

 sharper in this fossil cowry than in T. Europcea. 



Tenison-Woods figures an early stage of growth of this 

 species as T. minima in Proc. Linn. Soc, N.S.W., vol.iv., 1. 1, 

 f. 8, 1879, relying for a differential character on the absence 

 of a dorsal division between the ridges. He judged, more- 



