398 FUNAFUTI ATOLL. 



pressure of current Museum duties has operated unfavourably on 

 my report. Various inquiries on anatomy and other related 

 matters have been perforce omitted. With the exception of a 

 sketch of the geographical distribution I have unwillingly restricted 

 myself to the mere systematic treatment of the species. 



A superficial reader might seize on the fact that many new 

 species are described as new in the following pages, and with a 

 show of reason deduce that so great a proportion of novelties 

 indicate a very peculiar and endemic fauna. This would however 

 be a mistaken impression. Few realise how exceeding rich the 

 fauna of the tropical Pacific is, or how poor our knowledge thereof. 

 Probably, except in New Caledonia, a capable collector would 

 obtain at least one shell new to science in a day's work on any 

 beach in the South Pacific. Fischer's estimate that the Indo- 

 Pacific Province contains five or six thousand marine mollusca,* 

 is certainly below the mark. 



For the purpose of comparison the Funafuti fauna must be 

 divided into large conspicuous, and small inconspicuous shells. 

 The distribution already ascertained for conspicuous genera like 

 Cypraea will be paralleled, as knowledge increases, for inconspicu- 

 ous genera like Caecum. Thus I anticipate the discovery in the 

 western continental islands of every minute species I have 

 described as new from Funafuti. The range of all the species 

 mentioned is given for the South Pacific as completely as oppor- 

 tunity permitted. A discussion of the data collected is postponed 

 to the concluding pages of this Memoir. 



The study of the mollusca of the Pacific is attended with 

 peculiar difficulty. As a result of the superior energy of the 

 British in exploration, commerce and missionary enterprise in the 

 Pacific, the vast majority of the mollusca of this region have, from 

 the time of Captain Cook to the present day, been first examined 

 in London. The writers who have doalt with them, Adams Bros., 

 Hinds, Reeve, the Sowerbys, Smith, Melvill, and others, have 

 treated them uniformly on the model and method of Lamarck ; it 

 will be convenient to call this group of authors the " London 

 School." A brilliant exception to the work of British writers is 

 the superb Memoir by Boog Watson on the Gasteropoda collected 

 by the Challenger Expedition. 



As a consequence of the devotion of the London School to the 

 study of the Pacific fauna, we have a great mass of involved 

 synonomy, inadequate descriptions, poor figures or none, crude 

 classification and total negloct of soft anatomy, The smaller 

 portion of this fauna which has gone to Paris has generally been 

 well figured, and a fraction which has fallen into the hands of 



* Fischer Man. de Conch. 1887, p. 157. 



