1907. Notes. 25 1 



I have also to record another station for Trichoniscus vividns, Koch, 

 having lately found it in mj T own plantations here. This is some eight 

 miles from Borris, where Dr. Scharff took it, and eleven miles from the 

 place on the banks of the Slaney River where I took it, as recorded in the 

 I.N., vol. xv., p. 42, and is, I think, the most northerly point at which it 

 has yet been found. 



Denis R. Pack-Beresford. 

 Fenagh House, Bagenalstown. 



Helix hortensis in Co. Antrim. 



During the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club excursion to Slemish Moun- 

 tain, in June last, J. L. S. Jackson picked up a shell which I saw at once 

 was H. hortensis, a species for which we have no proper record in Co. 

 Antrim. It is true that William Thompson recorded it from Portrush 

 sandhills, but the older naturalists did not distinguish between white- 

 lipped H. nemoralis and the true H. hortensis, and Thompson's own notes* 

 show that the Portrush record was an error of determination on his 

 part. I have searched every corner of the sandhills and cliff areas there 

 for the past fifteen years, and never saw a trace of H. hortensis, though 

 white-lipped H. nemoralis are to be found in fair numbers on one parti- 

 cular area of the dunes. The habitat is not a suitable one for the other 

 species, much too exposed and dry. The nearest places to Slemish 

 from which undoubted specimens of this very local Irish mollusc have 

 been obtained are, banks of the river at Newtownstewart, Co. Tyrone, 

 and Downpatrick, Co. Down. Though a common and very widely distri- 

 buted species in England and Scotland, it is very local in Ireland, all 

 the localities being in the eastern counties, except one very local colony 

 in the north-west at Portsalon. H. hortensis lives in much damper 

 localities than H. nemoralis, in Ireland favouring old graveyards with 

 their rank vegetation and moist shade ; and when rain comes after a 

 dry spell of weather may be seen climbing to the top of the tallest 

 hedges, or all over the gravestones when the habitat is a graveyard. The 

 shell is smaller, thinner, and the epidermis and lines of growth finer 

 than in H. nemoralis. I have never seen an Irish specimen with a black 

 or brown lip, though they are sometimes found in England. Owing to 

 the number of mistakes that have been made in the past in recording 

 white-lipped H. nemoralis tor 1his species, I had the " love dart'' dis- 

 sected out by G. W. Jackson, Manchester Museum, to confirm the iden- 

 tification. 



R. Wei,ch. 



Belfast. 



Nat. History of Ireland, vol. 4. 



