QUEENSLAND MOLLUSCAN NOTES, No. S. 
73 
QUEENSLAND MOLLUSCAN NOTES, No. 2. 
By Tom Iredale.* 
(Plate IX.) 
Continuing these notes, f new species are described and rectifications of 
identity are recorded. These are determined mainly from the collections made 
by Mr. Melbourne Ward and Mr. William Board man, of the Australian Museum, 
who have dredged successfully in Port Curtis, and off North-west Island, 
Capricorn Group. Successful shore collecting was also done by them on the 
mainland and islets, and this has proved of service for comparison, showing 
clearly the distinction between the fauna of the mainland and that of the 
coral reef. 
The accompanying illustrations were prepared by Miss J. K. Allan, of the 
Australian Museum, to whom my best thanks are here tendered. 
Melaxinsea labyrintha gen. & sp. nov. 
(Plate IX, figs. 1-4.) 
Under this name is described the shell which in recent years has been called 
Glycymeris vitreus Lamarck. Beautiful living specimens were dredged by Mr. 
Melbourne Ward in Albany Passage, 9-12 fathoms, and upon checking Lamarck’s 
reference many discrepancies were noted. Firstly, it was described from “ Mers 
australes” collected by Peron, and this shell is only taken by the dredge in 
Queensland waters where Peron did not collect. This created suspicion, and 
the description called for a thin brittle shell, which this species is not, and 
then it was found that Reeve had figured the unique valve. Reeve’s figures 
definitely showed a differently shaped shell with a more complex sculpture, the 
ears especially differing. 
Shell semi-orbicular, very compressed, thin but solid, a little oblique. 
Colouration dirty cream or fawn marked with brown spots irregularly. The 
straight ligamental edge shows a narrow compressed ligamental area above which 
the umbones almost meet. The sculpture in the adult shows close radial lines of 
nodules on a groundwork of concentric crinkled threads. The minute juvenile 
here figured shows that the sculpture begins as about twenty defined nodulose 
ribs, the interstices minutely concentrically threaded. With age these ribs split, 
the nodules being less continuous, and in the adult fifty or more ribs can be 
* By permission of the Trustees of the Australian Museum, 
t Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, vol. ix, part 3, 1929. 
