288
NOTES ON THE MOLLUSC PALUDESTRINA
JENKINSI, Smith, IN ESSEX AND ELSE-
WHERE.
By A. S. KENNARD, Member of the Malacological Society, and B. B. WOODWARD, F.L.S., &c.
[Read December 8th, 1900.]
When in 1889 1 Mr. E. A. Smith described the above
species as new to science, considerable interest was aroused by
it. That a species should exist in such numbers close to London
and yet be unrecorded was indeed remarkable. 2 To have been
the first to notice it was at once claimed by more than one
person, whilst others declared it to be only a variety of
P. ventrosa (Mont.), and a third opinion was hazarded that it
was a foreign species which had been recently introduced.
In 1892 3 one of us described and figured the radula of
P. jenkinsi and showed its specific distinctness from P. ventrosa.
Mr. A. J. Jenkins, after whom the shell is named, informs
us that he first noticed the species at East Greenwich in 1883,
but, as we shall see later, it was found in the Thames marshes at
least twenty-five years before.
In 1886 Mr. G. Sherriff Tye had examples sent to him
by the late Miss E. R. Fairbrass from between Deal and Sand-
wich, perhaps from the same locality whence Mr. L. E.
Adams obtained his examples in 1891. It has since been
found abundantly in England at Topsham, Lewes, Short
Heath (near Dudley), near Middlesbrough and Droylsden
(Lancashire). Mr. L. E. Adams has obtained a single dead
example at Hythe and Mr. C. Oldham informs me that he has
recently found it in abundance in the Trent and Mersey Canal
near Sandbach (Cheshire), and a few immature examples in the
Shropshire Union Canal, near Beeston Castle. In Ireland,
through the researches of Mr. R. Welch of Belfast, it has been
1 "Notes on British Hydrobiae with description of a supposed new species." Journal of
Conchology, vol. vi. (1889), pp. 142-5.
2 Another new and closely allied form has just been found at Dukinfield, Lancashire
and described by Mr. E. A. Smith under the name of Paludestrina taylori in the Ann. and
Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. vii., vol. vii., p. 191. both forms have their nearest allies in Tasmanian
species.
3 B. B. Woodward. "On the Radula of Paludestrina jenkinsi, Smith, and that of
P. ventrosa, Mont," Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Ser. vi., vol. ix. (1892),
pp. 376-S.