Helix heldiana Pfeiffer, 1853

Brook, Fred J. & Ablett, Jonathan D., 2019, Type material of land snails (Mollusca: Gastropoda) described from New Zealand by taxonomists in Europe and North America between 1830 and 1934, and the history of research on the New Zealand land snail fauna from 1824 to 1917, Zootaxa 4697 (1), pp. 1-117 : 73

Helix heldiana Pfeiffer, 1853

Pfeiffer, 1853a. Monographia heliceorum viventium, 3: 60.

Type material: Original description based on one or more specimens in the Cuming collection; type material not found in NHMUK collections in 2018, and whereabouts unknown .

Type locality: ‘Nova Seelandia’ ( Pfeiffer 1853a: 60).

Remarks: There are no published illustrations of the type material, which had been obtained by H. Cuming from the Australian-based naturalist Frederick Strange. Pfeiffer (1854a: 148) listed the shell dimensions as “Diam. 2, alt. 1 2 / 3 mill.” He evidently intended to publish the original description of this species in Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1851 (see Pfeiffer 1853a: 60), but publication was delayed until 1854 ( Pfeiffer 1854b: 148), and was pre-empted by Pfeiffer (1853a: 60). Martens (1873: 11) noted that Nanina erigone Gray, 1850 and Helix heldiana Pfeiffer, 1853 were very similar.

Current Taxonomy: Treated as a junior synonym of Nanina erigone Gray, 1850 by Hutton (1884b: 197), Hedley & Suter (1893: 648) and Suter (1894d: 276, 1913b: 750).