DISPERSAL BY MAN. 243 



beyond the confines of cultivation. In the absence of 

 information on the point,, for instance, a person visiting 

 Cape Town would hardly regard H. aspersa, which he 

 m'ight find in the neighbourhood in large numbers, as 

 a comparatively recent importation from Europe. 

 Supposing H. pomatia to be really indigenous in 

 England, it seems somewhat difficult to account for 

 the wide-spread notion that such is not the case. The 

 belief that the creature was imported from abroad 

 by our own countrymen, we have seen, has prevailed for 

 a long time, and is perhaps more general than the idea 

 that it was introduced, previously, by the Romans. In 

 1863, we find Reeve stating, on the authority of a Mr. 

 Barlow, that " specimens had been transported from 

 Italy some thirty years before by an English nobleman,'* 

 to the range of hills in the neighbourhood of Reigate 

 and Box Hill, in Surrey, '^ and as they had bred 

 abundantly Mr. Barlow was induced to take a house in 

 that locality," in order that a diet of snails might be 

 administered to one of his sons, who was considered to be 

 in the last stage of consumption. A correspondent writing 

 to Nature^ in 1883, mentioned that when collecting the 

 shells of this animal, many years ago, about the foot of 

 Box Hill, he was told by a farmer resident in that 

 neighbourhood that *' the snails were brought from 

 Italy by Mr. Hope, of Deepdene, who was well known 

 in the early part of this century as a writer on the 

 mediaeval architecture of Italy." Murray's " Hand- 

 book to Surrey" and Bevan's "Guide" both refer to 

 the creature as imported, the first-named stating that it 



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