JOURNAL 



or THE 



ASIATIC SOCIETY OF BENGAL. 



Part II— PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 



No. III.— 1881 



XI. — New or little-known Mollusca of the Indo-Malayan Fauna. 

 By Geoffrey Nevill, C. M. Z. S. 



[Received 30th June ;— Read 6th July, 1881.] 



(With Plates V, VI, & VII.) 



Mr. A. R. Wallace in his very interesting new work — ' Island Life' — 

 devotes a chapter to the Madagascar Group, and he comes to the conclu- 

 sion that the presence there of the numerous and important Indo-Malayan 

 forms cannot be accounted for by a former continental land connection, for 

 which the term " Lemuria" has been suggested by an eminent zoologist. 

 If I understand rightly, the distinguished author accounts for the presence 

 of these forms by their introduction from Europe, and from consequently 

 Asia, before the separation of Africa by the sea in early Tertiary times ; in 

 another passage, he suggests the probable submergence of many Luge 

 islands, whose former position is indicated at the present time by the 

 banks and reefs of the Cargados, Chagos, Maldives, &c, to account for 

 the " transmission of organisms from the Indian Peninsula." 



As Mr. Wallace twice alludes to my papers on the Mollusca of the 

 Seychelle Islands (pp. 405 and 415), which I wrote so long ago as 1868-9, I 

 now wish to add a few remarks. Speaking solely from the conchological point 

 of view, I would submit that there is certainly no necessity for presuming the 

 existence of a continent, " Lemuria ;" on the contrary, an archipelago, thickly 

 studded with large islands, such as appears to be unmistakeably indicated in 

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