Mollusks of the Genera Cerion and Tudora

Although the islands of Curaçao, Aruba and Bonaire have received the attention of many naturalists, from the beginning of the West-Indian trade until to-day, it was not before 1924 that a suitable publication on the “Land and Freshwater Molluscs of the Dutch Leeward Islands” was written by Horace Burrington Baker. I should like to express my appreciation of this work, which not only facilitated my studies, but, at the same time, forced me to collect the landshells of these islands in a most intensive and systematical way, — because I should not have been competent to critisize his results, if I had not had a material of at least the same value at my disposal. As Baker very precisely localized his stations, I could collect a large series of topotypes of nearly all his new species and subspecies. This, in addition to his reproductions of the holotypes and paratypes, and the comparison of some of his paratypes in the Zoological Museum of Amsterdam, made a study of Baker’s collection rather unnecessary.