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HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



many varieties — fuscescens, fufescens, aurantiaca, 

 cinerea, &c. — which have been mentioned otherwhere. 

 One, however — the V. atripunctata, of Locard — has 

 been missed over ; this is ashy, spotted with black, 

 and has two black bands. 



Then again, there have been a good many slugs 

 which have been described as distinct species, but 

 which in reality are but varieties of this one. Arion 

 bourguignati, as it was called by Mabille in 1 868, is 

 one of these, and this the reader knows is indigenous to 

 our fauna. This is of a greyish-white colour, slightly 

 banded on both sides, and has the foot-fringe striated. 

 The others, which we must accept as varieties merely 

 and not as species, are the following : — A. rupicolus, 

 Mab., aggericolus, Mab., rnbiginosits, Baud., dupuy- 

 ianus, Bourg., paladilhianus, Mab., neastriacus, 

 Mab., and citrinus, Westerl. 



But on account of the every likelihood of their 

 turning up in process of time as British, I think I had 

 better describe them : — 



Var. fupicola, Mab. itS6S ; greenish (occasionally 

 reddish), with obscure bands, and foot-fringe white 

 and striated. At present it is found in France and 

 the west of Germany. 



Var. aggericola, Mab. 1870, is yellowish-rose, 

 blackish bands, and striated foot-fringe. French. 



Var. riibiginosa, Baud. 1867 ; yellowish-red, 

 banded with violet and has the mantle obscurely 

 banded and but slightly granulated. French. 



Var. dupuyiana, Bourg. 1864, is sky-bluish in tint, 

 with the mantle (not the body) banded on both sides, 

 and the posterior portion of the back distinctly 

 carinated with white. French. 



Var. paladilhiana, Mab. 1870; greenish. 



Var. natstriaca, Mab. 1S68 ; reddish-gray with 

 the foot-fringe not striated, and slightly banded on 

 both sides. 



Var. citrina, Westerl. 1873 ; citron-coloured, head 

 and tentacles black and back without bands. 



In No. 1 of the " Naturalists' Monthly," Mr. Geo. 

 Roberts states that he has taken this species and its 

 variety bonrguignati from his garden at Loflhouse. 



If the reader should wish to look up the specific 

 distinctness of A. hortensis and subfusats from ater 

 I may just say that he will find a very interesting 

 note by Simroth in Ber. Ges. Leipz. for 1883. 



Gen. Geomalcus, Allman, 1S46. — G. maculosus, 

 Allm. 1846. — This slug was first found by Andrews 

 in the autumn of 1842 quietly stretched out on rocks 

 round Lough Carogh, in county Kerry, Ireland, and 

 from him sent to Professor Allman, who described it 

 and founded a new genus for it on p. 297 of the 

 seventeenth volume of the "Annals of Natural 

 History." There its haunts are depicted with such 

 beautiful descriptive word-painting that I am sure 

 both the editor and the reader will excuse me for 

 transcribing from the pages of that journal the 

 following: — " Lake Carogh lies to the south of 

 Castlemain Bay in the county of Kerry, and stretches 



nearly north and south five miles. The lake narrows 

 at its centre where huge cliffs, principally of the old 

 red sandstone formation rise precipitously from the 

 margin on either side. On the east side are those of 

 Oulough. The broad surfaces of the rocks are 

 beautifully pictured with a map-like coating of lecidre 

 and lecanorre, and on these rocks within a circuit, 

 and at the distance of about 50 yards from the water, 

 the Geomalci on a misty or showery day may be 

 noticed quiescently stretched, their richly maculated 

 character being strikingly conspicuous. On the 

 opposite side is the romantic little glen of Limnavar, 

 and on similar rocks at the same range from the 

 water, Geomalcus is again met with, particularly the 

 white variety, but more sparingly than at Oulough. 

 On no other rocks around the lake or the country 

 are they to be observed." 



General considerations. — D. Barfurth has made 

 some interesting observations which go a consider- 

 able way towards elucidating the way in which the 

 epiphragma is formed. He finds that the liver of 

 species in the genera Arion and Limax contains a 

 considerable quantity of phosphate of lime, the 

 phosphoric acid alone contributing one-half of the 

 amount of inorganic substances present ; and more- 

 over that this salt lessens in amount during the 

 formation of an epiphragma or the restoration of a 

 broken shell. The same was present in Helix. 

 From these observations, it is pretty conclusive, I 

 think, that the office of the liver, in a part at any 

 rate, is to excrete for these purposes phosphate of 

 lime. 



In Z. Wiss. Zool. xxvi. pp. 227-337 and 347 there 

 is an interesting paper by H. Simroth on the senses 

 of the snails and slugs from an extensive examination 

 of species in the genera Arion, Helix, Cyclas, 

 Neritina, Planorbis and Limnaea. That observer 

 finds — he bases his observations chiefly on the 

 microscopical examination of the terminal corpuscles, 

 nerves, otoliths, epithelia and cilia — that the three 

 senses of tasting, smelling and feeling are distributed 

 more or less over the body, but that tasting is more 

 prominent in the anterior part of the buccal cavity 

 in terrestrial species, and that smelling is more 

 pronounced in the feelers. 



I have often been asked how I preserve my 

 slugs, and I will take this opportunity to tell the 

 reader, though I must ask him not to imagine any 

 originality on my part for the process, because it 

 was published over twenty years ago in a French 

 journal, and chance, while I was looking over for 

 some references to another paper some time back, 

 directed me to it. Since then I have employed it 

 with great and satisfied success. And call it, if you 

 please, Dubreuil's method. The process is simply 

 this : — the animal is killed in cold fresh water, and 

 all the mucus is cleared off ; in this it is allowed to 

 remain for six or eight hours, when a little common 

 table salt is added, and after soaking in the solution 



