128 G. Nevill— New or little-Mown [No. 3, 



and Prof. A. Nicholson in his l Manual of Palaeontology,' 1879, have all 

 omitted to take cognizance of the four highly interesting and important 

 species of fossil Helix described by Dr. Stoliczka in his Cretaceous Fauna 

 of South India, Vol. II, 1867, three as species of Anchistoma, Klein 

 (more correctly Qonostoma, Helder) and one as a species of llacrocyclis, 

 Beck. 



All of the above works therefore must be amended, to the effect that 

 indubitable species of true Helix are known from the Upper Cretaceous. 

 I have carefully examined all the specimens of these Cretaceous Helicidae, 

 so excellently figured by Dr. Stoliczka, and am of opinion he was quite 

 right in referring three of the species to the subgenus Gonostoma ( = 

 Anchistoma), and I think it will interest Mons. Bourguignat and other 

 conchologists to find the ancestors of this, both in tertiary and recent 

 times, essentially European group, in so ancient a geological formation as 

 that of the Cretaceous rocks of South India. I consider Dr. Stoliczka to 

 have been less happy in his remarks as to the affinity of these forms with 

 our present Indian subgenera Plectopylis and Corilla, which seem to me 

 entirely different groups. The fourth of these Cretaceous forms, the 

 Macrocyclis carnatica of Stoliczka, is certainly not a species of true Macro- 

 cyclis, the type species of which is the South American H. laxata, Fer., 

 now said by Mons. Fischer to form a section of typical Helix. Dr. Sto- 

 liczka's species evidently belongs to what is now known as Patula, 

 Helder, but to which of the sections, it is impossible to say until better 

 specimens are forthcoming. 



In addition to the above recorded instances of landshells of proved 

 greater antiquity than the Tertiary Period, I am indebted to Dr. Feist- 

 mantel for pointing out that three well preserved species have been de- 

 scribed from the Coal Measures of Nova Scotia by Dr. Dawson, Dawsonella 

 meeki, Zonites (Conulus) prisons, and Pupa (Dendropupa) vetusta (from 

 " the hollow trunk of an erect Sigillaria"), copies of the figures of the two 

 latter being given in Nicholson's Manual ; these are doubtless the forms 

 of Helicidae alluded to by Wallace in his above quoted work from the 

 Carboniferous ? Dr. Stoliczka, 1. c., page 6, also writes " Except the 

 JBoysia Reussii, which was in 1859 described by myself from a Cretaceous 

 freshwater deposit in the North-Eastern Alps, I am not aware that any 

 species of true Helicidae have been noticed from deposits lower than the 

 Eocene strata." Pfeiffer does not record this so-called JBoysia, nor indeed 

 any of the above-mentioned Cretaceous Helices ; it is, however, a very well 

 characterized form, I should consider from the figure, possibly correctly 

 referred to Boysia ; it was found in tolerable abundance and is well figured 

 in the Sitz. K. Ak. Wien, XXXVIII, 1859. This Boysia reussii has 

 been latterly referred by Professor Sandberger to the genus StropJiostoma, 



