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Show 1871.] DR. J. C. COX ON NEW AUSTRALIAN LAND SHELLS. 53 to verify his measurements, I wrote to the Curator of the Hull Literary and Philosophical Society, who replies, in a letter dated Jan. 13, 1871, " I cannot imagine where Mr. Brown obtained his information. I have been to the Trinity House, have seen some of the leading men, and have looked over their Museum ; and there is no such thing as the skull of a Narwhal about the place ! They have two large horns, fixed one on each side of a door, with a silver plate, and the name of the donor engraved thereon; but that is all belonging to the Narwhal; and they are very much surprised at the statement I made. I made inquiry of some other people, but could not gain auy information. T then went to a friend of the Gravilles ; and he told me he had never heard of the skull with two tusks, which he thought he should have done had there been such a thing. He said he knew the widow had several tusks, which were sold some time ago, as he saw them before they were sold. Captain Graville, the elder, was frozen to death some years ago in the Arctic Seas; and the said horns were sold some time after his death by his widow. I asked if he thought it possible that the son had any thing of the sort; and he replied that he had not, as he had lived next door to him for some time, and was very intimate with him, and he was quite certain that if he had possessed such a thing he should have been made acquainted with it." There are several interesting questions about the dentition of the young Narwhal, which is said to have molar and incisor teeth ; but it will be necessary to procure fresh specimens before any certain conclusions can be arrived at respecting them. 2. Descriptions of seven new Species of Australian Laud Shells. By J A M E S C. C O X , M.D., C.M.Z.S. [Received December 2, 1870.] (Plate III.) 1. HELIX GRATIOSA, sp. nov. (Plate III. figs. 1, 1 a.) Shell imperforate, rather thin, globosely turbinated, finely striated with lines of growth, and, under the lens, irregularly transversely striated; yellow-brown, ornamented with two rather broad dark chestnut bauds, one beneath the suture, the other above the centre of the body-whorl, and a third round the umbilical region; spire conoid, apex smooth; whorls 7, rather convex, the last somewhat inflated, rounded at the base ; suture distinctly margined below with a rather broad white line; aperture ovately lunate, diagonal, purplish within; peristome expanded and reflexed, slightly thickened and dark; margins joined by a thin dark callus ; columella broadly expanded and completely occluding the umbilicus. Diameter, greatest 1*28, least 1*12; height 1*30 of an inch. Hab. Whitsunday Island, off Port Denison, Queensland. |