BY C. HEDLET. 



163 



lida?, and though his name Janella, on which it was founded, has 

 been dropped, this divisional name may be still adhered to. 

 There is not so much disposition to follow him when he makes 

 another family for the reception of Aneitea.f But the many 

 remarkable peculiarities of the bitentaculate slugs, viz., the curious 

 involuted radula, the anterior position of the genital organs, and 

 the absence of the lower tentacles, entitle them to be considered 

 as a family of equal value to the Succineidce, the Limacidaa, etc. 



The members of this family are very limited, and a review of 

 them may not be without interest. Amongst the various additions 

 by which Quoy and Gaimard enriched the science of their time 

 during the voyage of the " Astrolabe," was an extraordinary 

 slug, which the French naturalists observed on leaves whilst their 

 vessel was anchored in Tasman's Bay, New Zealand ; they only 

 found a single specimen, of which they were unable to make a 

 thorough examination. 



One feature it offered, by which it was distinguished at a 

 glance from every slug then known or since discovered in either 

 of the four great continents of the world ; it possessed only two 

 tentacles, no trace appearing of the lesser eyeless tentacles. 

 Accordingly the appropriate name of Limax bitentaculatus was 

 bestowed upon it. The wide difference between this and the 

 European Limaces so impressed Gray, that he erected the new 

 genus Janella for its reception. This name had been twelve 

 years before given by Grateloup to a genus of sea shells ; and 

 must therefore fall according to the rules of scientific nomenclature- 

 On receiving another specimen of this mollusk from New 

 Zealand, Gray published a fuller account of it,* naming his speci- 

 men antipodarum, a name now regarded as a synonym of biten- 

 taculatus. Meanwhile Gould, the American conchologist, had, in 

 1852, redescribed the genus at A (can) thoracophorus.ft 



A. marmorea was made the type of a new genus Konophera§ by 

 Professor Hutton, but further information inducer] him to sup- 

 press it. || Another species, A. papilla'a, Hutton, is considered by its 



t Ann. and Mig. Nat. His.. 3-G-195. 

 * Ann. and Ma<j. Xat. Hist., 2-12-412. 

 ft United States Exploring Kxpedition under Captain Wilkes. Vol. xii., p. 1 

 § Transactions X.Z. Institute. Vol. xi.. p. 322. 

 >i Transactions X.Z. Institute. Vol. xiv., p. 151. 



