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Show 1^85.] FROM THE SOLOMON ISLANDS. 599 The specimens described by Pfeiffer were said to have come from Tanna, one of the N e w Hebrides islands ; but this certainly requires confirmation, as so many of the localities in Cuming's collection are erroneous. The figures in Sowerby's Monographs are all enlarged, those in the ' Thesaurus' being fairly accurate as regards form, but those in the * Conchologia Iconica ' are altogether unlike the species. The operculum of this little shell is white, concave in the middle, and is broadly thickened along the outer margin. 34. HELICINA SOLOMONENSIS. (Plate XXXVI. figs. 11, 11 b.) Shell small, globose-conical, reddish or yellowish, pale at the apex. Whorls 4-4 5, the least convex above, sculptured with lines of growth and fine spiral striae both on the upper and lower surfaces, very faintly margined above at the suture; last whorl rounded at the periphery, obsoletely angled near the junction of the outer lip and the least descending in front, so that the faint angulation is visible for a short distance above the sutural line. Aperture somewhat semicircular and oblique, small; peristome slightly expanded ; umbilical callosity yellowish or pellucid whitish, defined towards the the base of the columellar margin. Greatest width 4 | millim., smallest 4 ; height 3£. Hab. Faro, Shortland, and Treasury Islands. The specimens from the last of the above islands were obtained " at a height of 900 feet above the sea." This little species is of about the same size and form as H. multicolor, Gould, but is distinguished by the spiral sculpture. The operculum is greyish, becoming rather darker at the middle. 35. PYTHIA SCARAB^EUS, Linne. Hab. Santa Anna Island, " living on a sandy swampy soil raised a few feet above the sea " ( Guppy). Of the five adult specimens from the above locality, which are of medium size (about 30 millims. long) and normally mottled and blotched, three are umbilicated and one imperforate. The variation in this respect has already been referred to in my account of the Land and Freshwater Mollusca of the 'Challenger' Expedition (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1884, pp. 261 and 268). P. insularis of Hombron and Jacquinot I regard as the same as this species. Three specimens of the variety named P. albovaricosa by Pfeiffer were also collected by Mr. Guppy " on the low tract skirting the coast on the south-east side of San Christoval." Two of these specimens are coloured precisely like the types, which were said to have come from the island of Celebes, but the third is very remarkable, being totally white. Three young specimens of the normal form, from banta Anna Island, are clothed with a very thin epidermis which is produced into numerous parallel thin hair-like threads in the direction of the line of growth. At this early stage the shells are imperforate, and the columella has in consequence a somewhat different appearance. |