DISPERSAL BY MAN. 24I 



at Wroxeter nor at York, nor in many other parts of Eng- 

 land and Wales where the Romans built cities or had 

 important military stations, and in " all probability this 

 kind of snail was not known to them, as another species 

 (//". hicoriun) takes its place in Central Italy." Recur- 

 ring to the subject in Nature, in 1883, Mr. Jeffreys 

 added that among the debris of an extensive Roman 

 villa, discovered in Northamptonshire, in which the 

 shells of cockles, oysters, mussels and whelks abounded, 

 not one of H. pomatia occurred, although at Woodford, 

 a few miles distant, it is plentiful in a living state. The 

 Rev. L. Blomefield, writing from Bath in the same 

 journal, stated that he had neither found, nor heard of 

 the discovery of, a single specimen, either living or dead, 

 in the neighbourhood of that city, which the Romans 

 occupied for more than four hundred years. On the 

 other hand, Mr. D. Pidgeon, though believing the 

 supposed connection between Roman remains and H. 

 pomatia to be merely fanciful, has remarked that a fine 

 example of the Roman villa stands at a short distance 

 from the spot near Charlbury, Oxfordshire, where, 

 within somewhat narrow limits, the snail is now 

 abundant. 



It is curious to find that Reeve (1863) differed from 

 his contemporaries, and stated that the present species 

 could hardly be said to be indigenous ; he remarked, 

 however, that if not indigenous it had become fully 

 naturalized in our southern counties. Tate (1866) did 

 not express any opinion on the point, and Rimmer 

 (1880) merely quoted Jeffreys, 



