140 Oilman Shells. [No. 2. 



shell, deprived of its epidermis. The terms in which Lamarck men- 

 tions its habitat, and the doubt whether it belonged to China or 

 Japan, may well account for his describing it as a sea-shell. He places 

 it immediately after the British marine species Solen antiquatus, 

 which approaches Novaculina in form and in its exserted medial 

 beaks, though it differs in the number of the teeth. From Nova- 

 culina gangetica* (nobis), to which it bears a near resemblance, it 

 is well distinguished by the radiate depression which runs from the 

 apex to the base of the shell, and which bears an appearance, as if a 

 string had been tightly tied obliquely round the closed valves when 

 in a soft state. 



Novaculina now numbers five species, two of them American, two 

 Chinese, viz. constricta and acutidens (Sowerby, Broderip, Zool. Jour. 

 Vol. IV. p. 361), and the Indian gangetica, the species on which the 

 genus was originally founded. Swainson has adopted it as a sub- 

 genus of Solen. Gray's Solen novaculina (GrtiT. Cuvier, Vol. 12, 

 PL 31, fig. 1.) appears to represent an individual of gangetica, of 

 which the teeth were injured. A dwarf variety of the latter shell 

 occurs in the mud of the aqueducts in Calcutta. 



" Novaculina constricta was picked up among a number of other 

 shells, thrown in a heap outside the kitchen door at the house of the 

 first civil Mandarin of Ting-hae." 



With reference to the foregoing descriptions, it is interesting to 

 observe that several forms are absent which might have been ex- 

 pected to occur in the latitude of Chusan. Among the land Testacea, 

 independently of the true Limaces, we may notice the want of 

 Pupa, Vertigo, Carychium and Cyclostoma which are met with in 

 the temperate and warmer regions of Western Asia among rocks 

 and under stones. We miss the more ventricose forins of Bulimus 

 as well as of the genus Achatina. Succinea is also wanting, but occurs 

 abundantly farther south, at Macao. Among the fresh water genera 

 we miss Ampullaria, Neritina and Navicella, and among the Ace- 

 phala, the genus Psidium. 



Moradabad, December 29th, 1841. 



* Gleanings in Science, Vol. 2, p. G3, 1830, and PI. V. fig. 4, vol. I. and 

 Sowerby's Manual, fig. 63. 



