234 



during a visit to Florida, I can now only repeat my description of 

 it as published in Mitchell's edition of Nicholson's Encyclopedia. 

 Animal elongated, as long again as the shell, granulated; tentacula 

 four, superior ones oculiferous, abruptly deflected at tip, beyond 

 the eyes ; inferior ones much shorter, and abruptly deflected at tip ; 

 lips beneath the tentacula retractile, generally more or less re- 

 curved, compressed, attenuated, and acute at tip, and forming a con- 

 siderable interval between their prominent bases. When the animal 

 is in motion, the elongated lips are used as tentacula to feel the way. 



Helix.*— Shell univalve, free, subglobular, convex or somewhat 

 conic. Aperture entire, wider than long, more or less oblique, a 

 little contracted by receiving a part of the convexity of the pre- 

 ceding volution, which also widely separates the lips. 



Animal hermaphrodite with four retractile tentacula, which are 

 tiliform or cylindrical ; anterior pair short; posterior pair much 

 longer, oculiferous at tip : spiracle on the right side of the neck, 

 near the anus, and another pore which contains the organs of re- 

 production ; they respire air only. 



Obs. This is a universal, and if I may use the expression, a 

 cosmopolite genus. The species are exceedingly numerous; in 

 favorable situations some of them are multiplied almost to infinity, 

 and become very destructive to cultivated plants. So formidable 

 are they in this respect in some parts of Europe, that many de- 

 vices are practised to destroy them. In North America they do 

 not multiply to an injurious extent, and I have never known a 

 garden or an orchard in which their^ depredations attracted the 

 preventive attention of the cultivator. 



They attain to their greatest magnitude and beauty in tropical 

 (•limates, and seem to be repelled only by the inhospitable rigor 

 ijf the polar regions. 



Notwithstanding this wide range over the globe, they may be 

 recalled to mind, wherever the English language is spoken, by the 

 name of Snml shells, and from their beauty and diversity of forms, 

 many persons who at first collected them for ornament, have been 

 led by that circumstance to devote their attention to this interest- 

 ing science. 



The genus Helix, as originally instituted by Linne, consisted of 

 an unnatural assemblage of species of various characters, habits 

 [* Am. Con. ii, — Ed.] 



