69 



€RITIOAL REMARKS ON THE TABLE CAPE 

 FOSSIL MOLI.USCA IN THE JOHNSTON COLLEC- 

 TION, WITH FIGURES. 

 By W. L. May. 



(With 4 plates and 21 figures). 

 [Received 30th August, 1918. Read 9th September, 1918.] 



The late R. M. Johnston, Go'vernment Statistician, 

 by hisi will bequeathed his natural history collections toi 

 the Royal Society of Tasmania; and the portion contain- 

 ing the recent and fossil mollusca is already at the Mus- . 

 eum. The Council of the Society has kindly allowed me, 

 not only to' carefully exa.mine these collections, but also 

 granted me permission to' have on loan siome of the type 

 and other specimens, for the purpose of figuring them. 

 This I have new accoimplished, and they will illustrate my 

 paper, which I hope may be of distinct value to those 

 who are, or may be, studying the Table Cape Molluscan 

 fauna. 



In these proceedings for 1876 the late J. E. Teniscn- 

 Woodsi described a large number of new species from 

 Table Cape which were supplied to him by R. M. John- 

 ston, by whom they had been collected. None of thesie 

 species were figured at that time, and a numbier have 

 remained unfigured until now. In addition to this some 

 were unrepresented by any type or authentic specimen. 



There is in the' T'asmanian Museum a collection of 

 types of this series, but it is by nO' means complete, and 

 it has been difficult, and in some cases impossible, for 

 workers tO' identify the species from the descriptions alone. 

 In this connection the Johnston collection is of distinct 

 value, as it is found to contain a large number of co-types 

 (some are probably types) of Woods' species, carefully 

 labelled. Thesis specimens have enabled me toi clear 

 up' several uncertainties, which are recorded below. 



In these jDroceedings for 1879 Johnston described an 

 additional number of fossil Mollusca, and most of his types 

 are still in the collection, althongh a few seem to^ bei miss- 

 ing. None of these are marked as "type," and some have 

 only the generic name attached, but in mosti casesi they can 

 be easily identified aiS being the types; several were fig- 

 ured by the author in his "Geology of Tasmania," and 

 others by Professor Tate, but some still remain to be 

 dealt with, and I am able to further reduce this number 



