A LIST OF THE LAND SHELLS RECORDED FROM 

 QUEENSLAND 



By C. Hedley. 



One great difficulty of the Australian student is that the original 

 descriptions of our Fauna are scattered through periodicals and 

 fugitive papers in every civilised tongue. Each naturalist who 

 travelled through the country carried home a collection which 

 contained a few new species. These were described in his local 

 paper. And thus, for comparison of the kindred species of a genus, 

 we must consult journals published in London and Paris, in 

 Frankfort and Genoa, in Sydney and Philadelphia. 



The principal work on our terrestrial mollusca is Dr Cox's 

 "Monograph of the Australian Land- shells." This was published in 

 1868 and contains descriptions of a hundred of our Queensland 

 shells. Since then this number has been almost doubled by various 

 observers. 



Yet the species now known probably represent but a scanty 

 outline of our fauna. No one locality has been thoroughly searched, 

 and only half-a-dozen stations, as Brisbane, Port Curtis, Rockhamp- 

 ton, Mackay, Bowen, and the Torres Straits Islands have been 

 cursorily examined. The anatomy and consequently the exact 

 position of our shells in their subgenera is almost unknown- 

 the Semper, in his account of the land-shells of the Philippine Islands, 

 describes the structure of several of our Hadne. He also adds 

 that our Panda Falconari is allied to the Indian Acavus — a genus 

 that is illustrated in every cabinet by the handsome H. hceinastoma. 

 Godwin Austen published an account of the anatomy of an 

 Australian Helicarion in his work on the land-shells of India. 

 This, I believe, comprises our information on this head. 



The soft parts of the mollusca and those animals that have no 

 shell have been entirely neglected, probably on account of the 

 greater difficulty attending their preservation and investigation. To 



