On the thalassoid genus Coxiella

Coxiella is a genus belonging to the family of the Truncatellidae, a family which is characterized according to Jeffreys by: spire truncated on the animal when arriving at maturity, the opening thus made being filled up with a fresh layer of shell. The line of fracture where the first-formed whorls were nibbed off is conspicuous, adult specimens have half the number of whorls of the young ones. The mouth of the shell is oval, with a complete peristome and furnished by a horny operculum. This operculum is, in the single generic representative of the European seas, ear-shaped with an eccentric nucleus. Before the operculum of the Australian genus Coxiella was studied, this genus was placed among the Truncatellas. These Australian Truncatellas, have however, a concentric operculum and although placed among other genera as Blanfordia and Pomatiopsis, they prooved not to be congeneric with them and therefore a new genus Coxiella was proposed in honour to Cox who described and figured the shells from South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania. I wish to tell something about the history of the genus Coxiella. The famous explorer of Australia Felix, Sir Thomas Mitchell, collected the first shells in a saline lake, he discovered more than a hundred miles distant from the sea and near the present western boundary of Victoria; here it occured in association with Salicornia and considerable quantities had been thrown up by the waves. Mitchell named the lake ”Mitre Lake” and his shells were transmitted to the famous English conchologist Sowerby who named them Truncatella filosa in Mitchell’s ”Three Expeditions” II p. 190 in the year 1838.