in the Persian Gulf

Abstract

Some months ago I received from Dr. J. Cosmo Melvill a small box containing brachiopods from the Persian Gulf. These had been obtained by Mr. F. W. Townsend in the course of his dredgings for Mollusca in that region. The locality on the box containing the specimens is Dabai, which lies within the Persian Gulf on the N.W. coast of Oman. Its exact position is on the west side of the peninsula of Ruus El Jibal, on what is known as the Pirate Coast. Unfortunately, no particulars as to depth etc. accompanied the specimens. With the exception of the Mollusca and some Madreporarian corals very little appears to be known of the fauna of the Persian Gulf. The Mollusca have been ably dealt with in a series of papers by Messrs. Melvill and Standen*, and the corals were described in 1911 in a paper by Miss Ruth Harrison "f, to which Professor S. J. Hickson added some further notes J. The discovery of Brachiopoda in the Persian Gulf is of very great interest, not only from the fact that these specimens are the first of the class to be recorded from this region — i. e., the N.W. corner of the Indian Ocean (including the Persian Gulf, Gulf of Oman, and Arabian Sea), — but more especially from the important bearing of these specimens on the subject of the relation of the fauna of the Persian Gulf to that of the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean. Four specimens only were present in the box, one of which is a Terebratulina, the other three belonging to the genus Muhlfeldtia. All are dead empty shells, and a small quantity of greyish marl was present in the interior of one or two. Unfortunately , in the case of the Terebratulina, the brachidium, or loop, is broken, but the shell is otherwise quite perfect, both valves being present. In form and size it is very like a specimen of Terebratulina caput-serpentis figured by Fischer and Oehlert from the ' Talisman ' Expedition in the Lusitanian Subregion §. It has the same general outline and is cut off