2i8 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



LI MAX TENELLUS IN SCOTLAND. 

 By W. DENISON ROEBUCK, F.L.S., Leeds. 



DURING the present autumn I have been working ener- 

 getically at filling up blanks in our knowledge of the distri- 

 bution of British slugs, especially of the genus Arion, for the 

 forthcoming part of Mr. Taylor's Monograph of the Land 

 and Freshwater Mollusca of the British Isles. 



At my request Mr. Robert Godfrey of Edinburgh has 

 collected in various parts of the Highlands for me, and he 

 has now been rewarded with a most important find. 



About the 26th of August he found a couple of small 

 slugs in the forest of Rothiemurchus, and suspected them to 

 be L. tenellus from the yellow slime, though they were not 

 so strongly tinged with that colour as he had seen them in 

 Switzerland. Rothiemurchus is in the Watsonian vice- 

 county of Easterness. 



On my receiving them I at once saw that they were of 

 a species of Limax that I had never seen before, and had 

 no hesitation in referring them to L. tenellus, Mull. I then 

 studied them along with Mr. J. W. Taylor, when we saw 

 that they were referable to the van fulva as described in his 

 Monograph. 



I wrote to congratulate Mr. Godfrey on his find, and 

 asked for more in order that we might study them in bulk. 

 On the 29th and 3Oth August he sent me a dozen or more, 

 including one or two fine well-grown examples measuring 

 30 mm. when crawling. But these examples were not like 

 the first two, and were of the var. cerca, their waxy-yellow 

 appearance showing that varietal name to be very 

 appropriate. In collecting these Mr. Godfrey was assisted 

 by his young friend Mr. Aird Whyte, by whom half the 

 examples were gathered. 



It was a great satisfaction to learn from Mr. Godfrey 

 that the slug turns out to be the common or dominant 

 species of the pine wood of the extensive and ancient forest 

 of Rothiemurchus, and not a mere sporadic occurrence, thus 

 firmly re-establishing its position as a real component of the 

 British fauna. 



