land shells : their tenacity of life. i09 



Helix undata and other snails from the 

 Madeiras. — Mr. Gaskoin mentions having received 

 from Mr. Wollaston several species of living snails, 

 mostly Helices, indigenous to Madeira and its adjacent 

 rocks, which, though they had lain in a box in dry 

 canvas bags for a year and a half, had been revived by 

 immersion in water. They were put under glass shades 

 on flower-pots filled with mould, or in large glass cases, 

 and all fed freely ; three specimens of the beautiful 

 H, undata, Lowe, produced more than two hundred small 

 pearl-like eggs, and some of the other species also 

 oviposited. Mr. Pickering is said to have received 

 from Mr. Wollaston a basketful of Madeira snails (of 

 twenty or thirty different species) three-fourths of which 

 were revived " after several months' fasting and cap- 

 tivity/' including a sea voyage. On the same subject a 

 communication of much interest was published by Mr. 

 Wollaston in 1850 : 



" During my residence in the island of Porto Santo, 

 from April 27th to May 4th, 1 848, I collected a large 

 quantity of Helices peculiar to the spot, and having 

 placed a small set of each, as types, in separate pill-boxes 

 (for examination by Mr. Lowe on my return to 

 Madeira), the rest were killed. These types were named 

 the following week by Mr. Lowe, and as I had to leave 

 immediately for England, I had no time to kill the 

 specimens. On my return home the boxes were 



California Academy of Sciences," October i8th, 1875, as quoted 

 in "Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist.," (4), xix., pp. 355-6 and " Quart. 

 Journ. Conch.," i., p. 218. 



