A REVISION OF THE BURMESE UNIONIDAE. 



By B. Prashad, D.Sc, Assistant Superintendent, 

 Zoological Survey of India. 



(Plate II.) 



In spite of various eminent malacologists having paid con- 

 siderable attention to the Burmese Unionidae from early times, 

 our knowledge of these forms was hitherto in a ver}' confused 

 state. Of the earlier authors, references to whose works are 

 embodied in this paper, Benson Gould, Blanford, Theobald and 

 Nevill deserve special mention ; all of them with the exception 

 of Blanford, who in 1866 ' tried to summarize all that was known 

 to date, described numbers of species at various times from 

 collections made in various parts of Burma. The most compre- 

 hensive collection of Burmese Unionidae was made by Leonardo 

 Fea in the years 1885- 1887 for the Genoa Museum and a detailed 

 paper' 2 on these collections was published by Tapparone-Canefri. 

 In the part dealing with the Unionidae thirteen new species and 

 varieties were described and notes were included on twenty-two 

 of the already known species and varieties. A small part of the 

 collection, however, which was probably received after the report 

 was written, was not included in it. Apparently Tapparone- 

 Canefri had to base his work to a very great extent, if not entirely, 

 on the incomplete published descriptions of the earlier authors 

 and on the illustrations in the Conchologia Indica of Hanley and 

 Theobald, for most of his identifications are incorrect, this would 

 not have happened if he had had authentically named material 

 for comparison. He referred all his new species to the composite 

 genus Unio, and gave elaborate descriptions but did not publish 

 any figures ; his work, therefore, has been a great stumbling block 

 in the way of all later work. Simpson 8 tried to remedy this by 

 an examination of the named duplicates of some of these species 

 which the United States National Museum had received by ex- 

 change, but did not succeed in many cases owing probably to the 

 small amount of material available. Haas * also has tried to deal 

 with some of the species, but the results of his work on the pre- 

 dominent Indo-Burmese genera have not been published as yet. 



1 Blanford, Journ. As. Soc. Bengal, XXXV, pt. i, pp. 134-155 (1866). 



8 Tapparone-Canefri, Ann. Mus. Civ. Stor. Nat.- Genova, XXVII pp. 339- 

 355 (1889). 



3 Simpson, Desc. Cat. Naiades (Detroit, 1914). 



* Haas, in Martini and Chemn. Conch.-Cab. Unio (in the course of publi- 

 cation). 



