JOURNAL OF CONCHOLOGY. 339 



NOTES ON THE 



LAND & FRESHWATER MOLLUSCA OF MANITOBA. 



By ROBERT MILLER CHRISTY. 



Although Manitoba is a country which has of late occasioned 

 much talk and discussion, it is but comparatively a few years 

 since it was the undisputed home of the Indian, the Buffalo, 

 and the Hudson's Bay Company. What little was then known 

 as to its great agricultural capabilities and its natural products 

 had principally been collected by survey -parties sent out for 

 the purpose of selecting the best route across the continent for 

 the Canadian Pacific Railway, consequently it is but slight 

 wonder that very little should be known concerning so com- 

 paratively unimportant a branch of natural history as the 

 mollusca. 



Having found occasion to visit Manitoba several times 

 during the last two years, and having always endeavoured to 

 obtain as large a series as possible of its mollusca, it is now my 

 intention to make a few remarks upon the results of my collect- 

 ing ; and in so doing it is impossible for me to acknowledge 

 too fully my great indebtedness to Mr. J. W. Taylor who has 

 been most kind in identifying all my specimens. So little 

 having hitherto been published upon the subject, I have thought 

 it well to make my notes as complete as possible by incorporat- 

 ing with them some additional information gained from two 

 other sources. One of these is a collection of the shells of 

 Manitoba and the region around the Lake of the Woods 

 formed by Dr. G. M. Dawson of the Geological Survey of 

 Canada, and now exhibited in the Peter Redpath Museum 

 at Montreal ; the other source consists of two lists of 

 shells collected in the country between Winnipeg and York 

 Factory, by Dr. Robert Bell, also of the Survey, identified by 

 Mr. J, F. Whiteaves, and published in the Annual Reports.* 



* App. III. (pp. 6i and 62) to Mr. Bell's Report of 1878— 79 ; also App. 

 IV. (pp. 75 and 76) to Mr. Bell's Report of 1879—80. 



