peesident's address. 73 



althoiigli included by Fisclier in his Muricidse, is more appropriately 

 placed in the Tsenioglossa. 



Of the Euthyneura the Tectibranchs are the senior branch, and 

 according to Pelseueer {39, p. 77) tlie most archaic families of the 

 group are the Bullidse and Acteonidse, which are nearest in their 

 affinities to the rhipidoglossate Trochids. Hence one would expect 

 to meet with them early in the geological series. As a matter of 

 fact the earliest representative that so far has been discovered appears 

 to be a species of Ct/UndrohuUina [Hcalites cM'honarius, De Kon.) in 

 the Carboniferous.' This, as presently to be seen, is antedated by the 

 Pulmonates in the Upper Devonian. 



The Nudibranchs, by some lucky chance, like that which revealed 

 PaI<^octo2ms, may yet furnish a genuine glimpse of their past history. 

 At present we fear that category will not include the exhibition 

 before the Geological Society of Glasgow by a Mr. John Smith of 

 "specimens of a curious set of small bodies found in a fossiliferous 

 shale exposed on the railway from Giffeu to Kilburnie in Ayrshire. 

 These bodies are still undetermined, but belonged, he believed, to 

 one of the Carboniferous Nudibranchs, and for which he therefore 

 proposed the provisional name of Archceodoris carbotiarius'^ {48)- 



The records of the Pulmonata in the remoter past are few but 

 highly interesting, and since, by a strange oversiglit, they have not 

 been done justice to in any single geological or other textbook, 

 perhaps it may be well to deal with them, and some associated 

 air-breathing Prosobranchs, a little at length. 



The first discovery of Palaeozoic Land Snails was made in 1852, 

 when Sir C. Lyell, in company with Dr. (afterwards Sir) J. W. 

 Dawson, visited the Upper Carboniferous beds at South Joggins, Nova 

 Scotia. From the interior of an erect stump of a Sigillaria, they 

 extracted some pupiform shells associated with the remains of some 

 reptiles. These shells were alluded to and figured, but not described 

 or named, in a joint paper in 1853 {29, p. 60, pi. iv, figs. 1-5). 

 In 1858 Owen's article on "Mollusca" appeared in the "Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica " {33), and unaware of, or having forgotten the discovery, 

 he states (p. 403) that " terrestrial species have not been found in 

 strata older than the Tertiary." His attention must have been 

 speedily called to the oversight, for in his later article on "Palae- 

 ontology," which appeared in 1859 {3Ij.), he alludes to their occurrence 

 (p. Ill), and gives the name Dendropupa to them, in brackets. In 

 1860, when this article was reprinted as a separate work under the 

 same title {35), the name is repeated (p. 79), but this time occurs 

 in the midst of a quotation, the source of which has not yet been 

 traced. That same year Dawson for the first time described and 

 named the mollusc Pupa vetusta {8), but, strange to say, in his 

 frequent succeeding references to the subject never again once alluded 

 to this paper. 



1 By ail oversight in Inst year's luklrcss (06, p. 252), Jjid/iiicila Ironi the I'erniiiin 

 was Livdited witli helng the earliest example. 



