440 MR. T. А. DYMES ON THE 
The numbers enclosed in the last column but one of Table УП. represent 
the seeds that I had to take from the loose ones to complete the masses, but 
which I could not feel sure belonged to any particular опе; after such 
reconstruction I ought to have had 34 seeds left over, but as a matter 
of fact there were only 26, so that 8 have still to he accounted for. Three 
of these, which possibly came from mass 8 of 13 seeds, were, I suspect, 
carried into its hole by the worm; but I cannot speak definitely, because 
I could not find them there. The fate of the other 5 has still to be 
discovered or conjectured, The worms may have been responsible for 
them too, or, despite my search, [ may have overlooked them ; but there 
are other possibilities, and one of them was suggested to me by a previous 
experience of my own. 
I have noticed snails in the garden at night with seeds of the Stock 
stieking to the body ; but these are light, thin, and flat, and very different 
from the ovoid ones of the Hellebore, with which they compare favourably 
when one comes to the possibility of mollusean dispersal. Moreover, а 
single seed of the Stock could quite well finish its first flight from the 
siliqua by alighting on the body of a snail, whereas for Helleborus fwtidus 
this is impossible ; it would have to get there from the soil, after the dis- 
integration of the mass. I did my best to witness an instance of its having 
done so in the open, but I did not succeed, and so I had to be content with 
experiment, and with proving the possibility of transport if it did get there. 
For these purposes ] employed captives. І confined а snail (Helia 
aspersa) under а glass jar on a plate; I provided him with a leaf of 
a Chrysanthemum, which is, 1 know, a тоПазсай tit-bit, and I also gave 
him two seed-masses, I took саге to cover the plate with earth, as ] 
have found, when experimenting with ants and the fruitlets of Geranium 
Robertianum, that the slight irregularities of the soil, especially when it is 
dry, are of no small account. 
The next morning (July 9th) the snail had eaten the whole of the leat 
with the exception of the midrib, and had mutilated the masses, one of which 
was in three pieces ; as neither of them had been reduced to single seeds, 
there was of course no evidence of dispersal, and all I could conclude was 
that the snail found both the leaf and the mass palatable. The first night 
was therefore barren of results, хо far as the evidence I was seeking is 
concerned. 
The same evening I replaced both masses by fresh ones. Now, I know 
that this snail will not eat Violet-leaves except when hard up for food ; so 
I thought that, as I was desirous also of discovering its likes and dislikes, 
[ would take the opportunity of seeing which of the two my eaptive 
preferred. 1 therefore put a single leaf of Viola odorata under the glass 
jar with the two masses. 
At 10 P.M. the snail was on the top of one mass; at 11 P.M. this was 
