240 THE DISPERSAL OF SHELLS. 



edition, and Captain Brown (1844) also regarded the 

 animal as a native, as did Forbes and Hanley in their 

 *^ British Mollusca " (1853) ; and indeed, I am not aware 

 that any post-Turtonian author, with the exception 

 perhaps of Reeve,' has reverted to the older belief of 

 Pennant, Da Costa, and their followers. Leach, it 

 seems, held the view that this snail {Poinatia anti- 

 qico7'iiin he called it) was an indigenous species long 

 before the publication of Turton's " Manual," for he re- 

 ferred to it as such in his " Synopsis," published by Gray 

 in 1852^ which is said to have been in course of printing 

 when the author was prevented from completing it by 

 ill health in 1820, and to have been re-printed and issued 

 exactly as it was left ; the creature's general diffusion 

 in a certain soil, he remarked, seemed to refute the 

 notion, held by many, that it had been imported from 

 the continent for the use of invalids. Mr. Jeffreys 

 (1862) was of opinion that there was no reason to 

 suppose that the creature was imported from Italy in the 

 sixteenth century, and he regarded it as equally indi- 

 genous, probably, with H, aspcrsa, our common garden- 

 snail. Neither of these species, he added, had been found 

 in this country in any recognized stratum of the upper 

 tertiary formation. Further, there was no foundation, 

 he thought, for the idea, prevalent at one time, that H. 

 poinatia had been introduced by the Romans, for though 

 found near several encampments, it had occurred neither 



' Since writing I find that Mr. Musson has recently referred to 

 H. poinatia as having been " taken to Britain by the Romans." See 

 " Proc. Lin. Soc. N.S.W.," for 1890,(2), v. (1891), pp. 8S3-4. 



