6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [Jan., 



for cover, evidently grassy pastures offering sufficient cover and 

 food for the species. This probably explains its present wide 

 distribution, as compared with L. granulosa, and its persisting in 

 places where the other species are not now found. It occurred along 

 the borders of the woods in the Somerset region and along the road- 

 sides at almost all places about Mandeville, especially being col- 

 lected along the Lower Santa Cruz Road in considerable numbers. 

 Here it was living on the grassy borders of the road, and was taken 

 from the clay banks in places where, for instance, Cepolis {Hemi- 

 trochus) graminicola was common. Along this Santa Cruz road the 

 forest is mostly cleared, but the L. aureola has sufficient cover in the 

 grass of the pastures which the road passes through. Both here 

 and especially at Somerset, two places selected as furnishing normal 

 forms of the species, the animals are living under what may be 

 termed optimum conditions. Nowhere in the Mandeville region, 

 in fact (except, perhaps near the Sturridge place, where L. aureola 

 was not found), are the fields really arid and, for a form that can 

 live on the ground with only grass for cover, the conditions are 

 perhaps never very unfavorable. A small form of this species is found 

 at Montego Bay, a region where the soil is so thin that the clearing 

 of the forest has resulted in the development of conditions that may 

 be described as arid, at least during the dry part of the year. Mon- 

 tego Bay is one of the oldest settlements in the island, dating back 

 to the Spanish occupation. The original forest has been cleared off 

 all of the more level ground, which has been under cultivation for 

 probably the greater part of a century. Where trees have been 

 planted, they are mostly logwood, which is grown in the pastures; 

 the trees being planted sufficiently far apart to allow the pasture 

 grass plenty of sun. In these logwood plantations, especially if 

 they are on a slope, the soil is very thin and the rock comes near the 

 surface. During the dry season the ground gets very parched 

 and the grass quite brown; in the wet season, from the end of April 

 to the end of November, when showers may occur at any time, the 

 torrential rains almost immediately drain off on the hill slopes, 

 and owing to the porous character of the soil the ground becomes 

 quite dry between the showers. For a great part of the year, 

 except when a rainy week maj- occur in May or November, any 

 mollusks that are ground dwellers must exist under alternating 

 short periods of great moisture and dryness, while during the dry 

 season, from December to April, they must sestivate under the almost 

 arid conditions which obtain. 



