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REPORT ON THE GASSIES COLLECTION OF PISIDIA IN THE 

 MUSEE D'HISTOIRE NATURELLE DE BORDEAUX. 



By A. W. Stelfox, M.R.I.A. 



Read 13th January, 1922. 



Through the kindness of Monsieur le Maire and Professor J. Chaine, 

 of Bordeaux, I have recently been enabled to make a thorough 

 examination of a small collection of Pisidia presented to the Museum 

 of that city by J. B. G-assies, circa 1859. 



The collection comprises thirteen card-tablets, upon which the 

 shells are mounted with gum and labelled in G-assies's writing. Each 

 tablet bears a number and these numbers correspond with the 

 numbers attached by Gassies to the species recorded in his 

 " Catalogue Raisonne des MoUusques terrestres et d'eau doace de 

 la Gironde ", 1859. In his earlier papers — " MoUusques terrestres 

 et d'eau douce de I'Agenais ", March, 1849, and " Description des 

 Pisidies observees a I'etat vivant dans la region Aquitanique de 

 Sud-Ouest de la France ", 1855 — Gassies described numerous new 

 species of Pisidium, namely P. limosum, 1849, and P. intermedium, 

 P. pallidum, P. Jaudouinianum, and P. glohulosum, 1855. Of these 

 five species only the two first mentioned are referred to in his paper 

 of 1859, or represented in the collection. Likewise the following 

 sT^ecies—P. Normandianum Dupuy, referred to by Gassies in 1849, 

 and P. Dupuyanum JSTormand, referred to in 1855 — are neither 

 represented in the collection nor mentioned in bis 1859 paper. 

 Whether Gassies had by the year 1859 given up these species, or 

 whether he did not consider they lived in the restricted area of 

 " La Gironde ", I am unable to discover. The fact remains that the 

 collection throws no light on the question what these species were, 

 with the exception of P. limosum and P. intermedium, both of which 

 are represented in the collection, the latter as a separate species, the 

 former as a variety of P. casertanum, Poli. 



Some shells seem to have been removed from the cards sub- 

 sequent (?) to their presentation to the Museum at Bordeaux, while 

 in two cases additional shells mounted on blue strips of paper would 

 appear to ha.ve been added. The whole collection would also seem 

 to have been examined, either by the late Dr. J. Gwyn Jeffreys 

 or by some one who considered he was well acquainted with this 

 author's view of the Pisidia, as on the back of the cards are, in some 

 cases, notes added in pencil, after which the words " Teste Jeffreys " 

 frequently follow. Whether this means that Jeffreys expressed a 

 personal opinion on the shells as the words would indicate, or whether 

 Ave are to read them merely as meaning " according to Jeffreys in 

 British Conchology ", I have no means of deciding. 



The titles on the cards and a list of the Pisidia mounted thereon 

 are as follows ; — 



