Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia eBook

Philip Parker King
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 567 pages of information about Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia.

Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia eBook

Philip Parker King
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 567 pages of information about Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia.

Shell with eight valves, bald; valves covered with numerous small tubercles both on the central and lateral area; marginal ligament smooth, bald.

100.  Patella tramoserica, Chemn. 11 179.  Icon.  Chemn. 11 t. 197. f. 1912, 1913.

101.  Patella radiata, Chemn. 11 100.  Icon.  Chemn. 11 t. 197. f. 1916, 1917.

When young, the form of this shell is more conical than in the figure above quoted, and the outer surface is finely radiately striated.

102.  Patella neglecta (n.) Patella melanogramma, Sowerby, not Gmel.  Icon.  Sow.  Gen. f.

When this shell is young, or when the older specimens have lived in deep water, where their surface has not been broken by the shingle, or corroded, or covered with coralloid incrustations, they are regularly radiately ribbed; the ribs are covered with narrow intermediate grooves, marked with a black spot on the internal edge of the shell, which is permanent through all the variations of the outer surface.  The inside is pale purplish-brown, with a yellowish-white muscular impression.  In the older specimens the central disk is often of a pure opaque-white, and the muscular impressions round the inner edge of the shell are both pellucid brownish-white; length four inches, breadth three, height two inches.

This shell is abundant on the rocky shores of King George the Third’s Sound.

In the collection there is a worn specimen of another species of this genus; but from its bad state, and from the very great confusion in which the various species of Patella are involved, I do not venture to describe it as a new shell, although there has not been any hitherto described to which, in its present state, it can with any certainty be referred.  It is conical, convex, with twenty-four or twenty-five distinct convex ribs alternately increasing in size; the grooves between the ribs are broad, with irregular, concentric, black-brown, raised lines, which appear to be caused by the wearing away of the other part of the dark outer coat; the inside is white with a brown disk, and the edge sinuated and furnished with grooves under the larger ribs.

103.  Haliotis roei (n.s.)

Testa subrotunda convexiuscula rugosa et plicata spiraliter sulcata intus argenteo et rubro margaritacea, spira prominula.  Icon. —­

Shell roundish, rather convex; the outside reddish or brownish, regular; closely but unequally spiral, ribbed, and irregularly and roughly concentrically striated and plaited; the row of perforations is rather prominent, and pierced with six or seven moderate-sized, slightly tubular, holes; the inside is iridescent, pearly, rather wavy, and exhibits two distinct whorls; the columella lip is short and flattened, outer lip rounded; the spire is convex, rather prominent, placed about one-third of the breadth of the shell from the outer lip, and consists of three whorls, which very rapidly enlarge.

This distinct shell, at the desire of Captain King, has been named after Lieutenant J.S.  Roe, the assistant-surveyor of the expedition.

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Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.