NEPTUNE A GONTRARIA. 159 



Prof. Kendall informed me many years ago that while specimens of dextral 

 Neptnneas in the Crag- are often covered with Balatii, he had never noticed any 

 on the sinistral ones. I have found them occasionally on the latter, but very 

 rarelv. 



Var. sinistrorsa, Deshayes. Plate XVI, figs. 8, 4. 



1830. Fiisus sinistrorsus, Desliayes, Eueycl. Meth. Verm., vol. ii, p. 160, no. 36. 



1836-44. Fusus contrarius, Pliilippi, Eii. Moll. Sic, vol. i, p. 205, 1836 ; vol. ii, p. 179, 1844. 



1847. Fusus contrarius, Eeeve, Couch. Icou., vol. iv (Fusus), pi. xii, fig. 46. 



1873-75. Nejjtunea contraria, Segueuza, Boll. R. Com. Geol. ItaL, vol. iv, p. 346, 1873; vol. v, 



p. 278, 1874 ; vol. vi, p. 282, 1875. 

 1887. Neptunea contraria, Kobelt, Icon, schalentrag. europ. Meeresconcli., vol. i, p. 65, pi. ii, fig. 1. 

 1890. Neptunea contraria, Carus, Prod. Faun. Medit., vol. ii, p. 400. 

 1895-98. Neptunea sinistrorsa, Meli, Boll. Soc. Geol. ItaL, vol. xiii, p. 302, 1895; Boll. Soc. Make. 



Ital., vol. XX, p. 115, pi. iv, figs. 1—5, 1898. 

 1898. Fusus {Neptunea) contrarius, F. W. Harmer, Proe. Intern. Congress Zool. (Cambridge), p. 222, 



pi. iii, fig. 1. 



Distrihution. — liecent : western coast of Spain — Vigo Bay; Mediterranean — 

 Barcelona (Michaud), Algiers (Meli), Sicily (Fischer). 



Fossil : Waltonian deposits : Walton-on-Naze, Little Oakley ; 

 probably elsewhere in the Red Crag. Upper Pliocene and Pleistocene : Sicily — 

 Ficarazzi, Sciacca, Monasterace, Messina, Santa Cristina near Reggio-Calabria. 



lieniarliS. — The specimens represented under the above name (PL XVI, figs. 3 

 and 4) from the Waltonian Crag of Oakley and the Pleistocene deposits of 

 Ficarazzi, near Palermo, may be taken as typical of the present variety. The 

 spiral striation is finer than in those last described, and they are generally more 

 graceful and slender. The sculpture of some Recent specimens from Vigo Bay in 

 the McAndrew collection at Cambridge is of an intermediate character (see my 

 paper of 1898, op. cit., fig. 4), as in those recorded by Prof. Meli from the Algerian 

 coast (oj). cit.). 



The Recent sinistral shells figured by Reeve and by Prof. Kobelt are of the 

 present variety, the typical N. contraria of the Crag being only known as fossil 

 from the Pliocene and Pleistocene deposits of Great Britain, Belgium and 

 Holland. 



Although these left-handed shells have a southern range at present, their 

 progenitors must have reached the Ano-lo-Belo-ian basin oris-inallv from the 

 north. 



