326 RECORDS OF THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM. 
DAPHNELLA BOTANICA Hedley. 
(Plate liii., figs. 157, 158, 159.) 
Daphnella botanica Hedley, Journ. Roy. Soe. N.S.W., li., 1918, suppl. 
p. M. 83. 
The first record of Daphnella from Australia was by G. F. Angas, 
who in 1867 reported D. crebriplicata Reeve and D. lymneformis (sic) 
Kiener from Sydney, and in 1880 D. fragilis Reeve from Aldinga Bay, 
South Australia.88 Actually these three names refer to a single species 
for which none of them can be used. According to the types in the South 
Kensington Museum, the Sydney species differs from the Philippine 
D. crebriplicata by being more delicately sculptured and more regularly 
fusiform. D. lymneiformis Kiener is a very distinct West Indian species. 
The spelling used by Angas showed that he took for this species the 
interpretation of Reeve, who figured another species under Kiener’s name. 
Pleurotoma fragilis Reeve was described without locality, but Smith ® has 
recognised it from Japan, while Bouge and Dautzenberg had it from 
New Caledonia. 
The representation of P. fragilis does not agree precisely with the 
Sydney shell, being a little broader and shorter, with less definite 
radial sculpture. We are, however, relieved of the difficulty of identifying 
this obscure species by the accident of a prior name. Hleven years previous 
to Reeve’s description a fossil of the Paris Basin had received the name of 
Pleurotoma fragilis from Deshayes.21 Accordingly the Sydney shell 
being thus left nameless, is introduced as Daphnella botanica, in reference 
to Botany Bay, i.e. New South Wales, and is defined thus :— 
Shell slender-fusiform, slightly contracted at the base, spire produced. 
Colour :—On a buff ground the whole surface is irregularly clouded or 
mottled with burnt umber, the dark spaces often predominating. Whorls 
six, plus the protoconch, rounded, wound obliquely, excavated at the 
fasciole, and angled below it. Sculpture:—The protoconch of two and a 
half whorls is microscopically obliquely reticulated; the last whorl has 
about forty spiral threads, the penultimate twelve, and so on till the 
topmost with three is reached; between the larger threads smaller ones 
are intercalated, and gradually enlarge till of equal size; small sharp 
radials, close set at the rate of about eighty to a whorl, over-ride the 
spirals and produce beads at the points of intersection; these extend 
unbroken across the whole shell. Aperture oblique elliptical, half the 
length of the shell; outer lip thin and arched forward; notch deep and 
broad; inner lip excavating the sculpture of raised network in its path of 
advancement; columella with a thin callus deposit. Length 20 mm., 
breadth 7 mm. 
88 Angas—Proc. Zool. Soc., 1867, p. 203; 1880, p. 416. 
89 Smith—Proe. Zool. Soc., 1879, p. 198. 
90 Bouge and Dautzenherg—Journ. de Conch., Ixi., 1914, p. 209. 
91 Deshayes—Descrip. Coq. Foss. Paris, ii., 1834, p. 480, pl. Ixvii., figs. 25, 26, 27. 
