184 The Irish Natuyalist. September, 



iu the month of September with Messrs. G. W. Chaster and E. Collier, 

 walking, driving, and boating about Sligo, As the Conference 

 excursions were fortunately arranged for localities different to those 

 visited iu 1900— with the exception of a small area in Carrowmore and 

 the lake shores in Glencar — we looked forward to an extended list. 

 More especially we wished to see how far a parallel could be drawn 

 between the well-known alpine or northern character of the Sligo flora 

 and its moUusca. Certainlj' our list shows a distinctly more northern 

 facies than the West Galway list of 1895,'' though the two areas are not 

 far apart. To a certain extent this also applies to the Kerry list of 

 1898.2 It may be that species absent or scarce in West Galway (and we 

 worked a much larger district than in Sligo) may owe their presence in 

 Kerr}' to the number and extent of the old native woods, and to the same 

 cause in Sligo. The latter has damp glens with a most luxuriant 

 vegetation — such as the minor glens along the cliffs in Glencar— deeply 

 worn in the limestone uplands. This mountain area has, mainly at high 

 altitudes, many crevices, rifts, and channels worn along the bedding 

 and joint planes by water-action. These provide, as we had abundant 

 proof of in the case of the H. arbiistoytim at the cave in GlenifiF, more 

 favourable habitats at all altitudes than the glaciated mountains 

 (quartzites, granites, &c.), and great bog-areas of Connemara could do. 

 If we take our 71 species as a basis, with the additional 8 found by Miss 

 Amy Warren in the western part of Sligo {Zoologist, 3rd ser., iii , 1879, 

 p. 25), we get in all about 79 species. Taking the Kerry and Galway 

 lists, to which we add some additional species recorded in this Journal, 

 or in Taylor and Roebuck's list,^ we get 66 species from Kerry and 

 62 from Galway West. This includes Lough Corrib shores, but not 

 the Clare or the Shannon finds. Comparing now^ the three areas, we 

 find about 43 species common to all ; and that Sligo (including the small 

 area of L,eitrim we visited) has the largest number of species peculiar to 

 itself. On the whole the fauna is more comparable with Kerry than 

 with Galway, or any of the central counties, but we think it more 

 nearly approaches the fauna of the north-east of Ireland (Antrim and 

 North Down), owing to the presence of more species which have a 

 northern or eastern range in Ireland. This may be due to similar little 

 havens of refuge.-* Sligo and Leitrim have two species, however, not 

 found in Antrim or Down so far, Neyitina Jiuviatilis and Planorbis vortex. 

 The former has a western range. Glencar Lough seems to be its most 

 northerly habitat in Ireland. The second seems to have its head- 

 quarters in the larger lakes of Sligo, Cavan, Leitrim, and Fermanagh. 

 The absence of one or two western species will be noticed iu our list, 

 such as IJyalinia cxcavata ; some eastern, such as Liiumva stagnalis, were 

 common locally ; others, like BtiHtninus obscurus, rare Planorbis coniortus 



1 Irish Nat., iv., Sept., 1895. 



2 Id., vii. Sept, 1898 



3 Proi. R.I. A., ser. 2, iv., 1888 p. 672. 

 * See p. 121, ante. 



