inhabiting the United States. 173 



found in Missouri by Professor C. B. Adams, and by Mr. 

 Haldeman in the south-western angle of Virginia. 



Remarks. In some individuals the whole upper surface is 

 irregularly clouded with brownish, without any tendency to 

 longitudinal arrangement ; in some, fine black spots are nu- 

 merous : in others, there are rows of large clouded spots ; a 

 single one was almost destitute of coloring. The head never 

 projects beyond the mantle. The tentacles are contractile 

 and retractile, as in the other species. When handled it se- 

 cretes from the skin a thick, milky, adhesive mucus, but I 

 have never seen it suspend itself by a mucous thread. I 

 have noticed its posterior extremity curved upwards when the 

 animal was in motion : at other times flattened and expanded, 

 and again very much corrugated, and apparently truncated ; 

 sometimes there appear to be one or more mucous glands at 

 this part, and the secretion of mucus from it is more plentiful 

 than from other parts of the body. The mantle is not cleft 

 from the respiratory foramen to the margin, as in some of 

 the species, but is provided with a deep furrow or canal run- 

 ning from the orifice to the edge of the mantle below it. 



It is very inactive and sluggish in its motions. It inhabits 

 forests, under the bark, and in the interior of decayed trunks 

 of fallen trees, among which it is particularly partial to the 

 Bass-wood, Tilia Americana. 



There can be no doubt that this is the animal originally 

 described by Bosc, under the name of Limax Caroliniensis^ 

 though his description is so imperfect that it can only be re- 

 cognized by the arrangement of colors which are peculiar to 

 it. His original drawing, engraved in Ferussac's work, is a 

 tolerably accurate representation of one of the varieties. He 

 makes no mention of the mantle, and it does not appear in 

 the figure ; hence Ferussac took it for granted that it is desti- 

 tute of it, and placed the animal in Rafinesque's genus Phi- 

 lomycus, which is chiefly distinguished from Limax by the 

 absence of this organ. Yet with a singular inconsistency, 

 having adopted this genus with all Rafinesque's characters, 

 he arranges it under that division of the family containing 

 the species entirely covered by a mantle. And as the other 



