328 MESSES. MELT ILL AND STANDEN ON [June 18, 



Mr. Edgar Smith ; Col. G. B. Mainwaring, Mr. W. Theobald; and, 

 more recently, Capt. Cartwright, R.N., Commander E. R. Shopland, 

 K.I.M., M.*E. Houssay, Mr. W. C. Carphin, Mr. J. O. Twells, 

 Lt.-Col. H. D. Olivier, Mr. Alexander Abercrombie of Bombay, 

 and Mr. Frederick W. Townsend. 



It is especially with the collections of the last-named that we 

 are dealing at the present opportunity. 



Mr. Townsend has been for many years officially connected with 

 the Indo-European Company, whose cable extends from Bushire 

 in the Persian Gulf along the Mekran Coast to Kai-achi, where, 

 at Manora, he resides, the total distance being considerably over 

 one thousand miles. 



Eor the past eight or nine years, as Chief of the Telegraph Staff 

 of the Indian Government steamer ' Patrick Stewart,' he has 

 been assiduously dredging wherever opportunity offered, and not 

 only exercising the greatest possible care and discrimination as to 

 the quality of the specimens gathered, but making notes, at the 

 time, of locality, depth, and other particulars, which so much 

 increase the value of the material dredged. 



Though, perhaps, not quite exhaustive, we imagine the larger 

 proportion of the species of Mollusca actually inhabiting this 

 vast region will be found catalogued in the accompanying List. 



It was in 1892-93 that Mr. Townsend's earliest consignments 

 were despatched home ; and Mr. G. B. Sow erby described certain 

 new forms from these, of which we would especially mention 

 Mangilia townscndi, fliso venosa, Spondylus exilis, Pecten toivns- 

 endi, and Sunetta kurachensis l . 



Just at the same juncture, too, Mr. Alexander Abercrombie 

 began to turn his attention to the Molluscan Fauna of the vicinity 

 of Bombay, as far south as Batnagiri, and, in coadjutorship with 

 one of the present authors, essayed a preliminary Catalogue 2 , 

 numbering in all some 325 species. It was then that this Fauna 

 was termed ' specialized,' so many interesting new forms did 

 it produce, and we wrote then in ignorance of what, so shortly, 

 Mr. Townsend's successful dredgings woidd reveal. By far 

 the greater part of the 52 species differentiated as new to 

 science from Mr. Abercrombie's collections reappeared, some in 

 great quantity, especially from the neighbourhood of Manora and 

 Charbar ; and, as several were described from poor or insufficient 

 material, it is gratifying to say with regard to nine-tenths of them, 

 that the examination of fine specimens more than endorses the 

 reasons for their differentiation. Some indeed, are very plentiful, 

 such as Marginella mazagonica, Engina zea, Columbella euterpe, 

 Ocinebra bombayana, Purpura blanfordi, Sistrum xuthedra, Pyr- 

 gulina callista, Odostomia syrnoloides, Cyclostrema solarieUum, and 

 Tellina lechriogramma. 



These Bombay gatherings, mainly made by Mr. Abercrombie, 

 slightly supplemented by Mr. Townsend, supplied the primary 



1 Proc. Mai. Soc. Lond. i. p. 214 -<gq., 278 sr/q. etc. 



2 Mem. Manch. Soc. vii. pp. 17-51. 



