AZOREAN GROUP. 3 



mind tlie constant intercommunication which is (and long has 

 been) going on between Portugal and the islands, and when we 

 further recollect how eminently liable many of the Terrestrial 

 Mollusks are to accidental transport tlii-ough indirect human 

 agencies, it is not surprising that we should find a larger 

 European element in the Azorean fauna than what is indicated 

 in the sub- African archipelagos farther to the south. Thus, 

 out of the 71 species which have been proved to inhabit the 

 cluster, about 27 (some of which have been established equally in 

 the Madeiras, Canaries, and Cape Verdes) exist on the opposite 

 continent, — leaving 44 ex^7Yt-European ones, which we may 

 perhaps pause for a few moments to contemplate. Now these 

 44 members of the Gastropoda are not all of them exclusively 

 Azorean ; and it is natural therefore to enquire if they include 

 amongst them anything which is sufficiently characteristic of 

 the (so-called) 'Atlantic pro\dnce' to tend to affiliate the pre- 

 sent group, in any degree whatsoever, with the more southern 

 ones which have yet to be considered. Remembering the mar- 

 vellous segregation of the ex^?'a-European t3;^es in the Madeiras 

 and Canaries, the majority of which are confined to their own 

 particular islands and do not permeate even their respective 

 archipelagos, we should a jpriori anticipate that there would be 

 next to nothing in common (when the Em'opean element has 

 been removed) between the faunas (whether singly or combined) 

 of those groups and that of the Azores. Yet there are a few 

 points of contact, nevertheless, which seem to me to bespeak a 

 certain unmistakable affinity between them. Thus the Helix 

 erubescens and paupercula and the Patula pusilla, all of them 

 emphatically ' Atlantic,' are represented at the Azores and 

 JNIadeiras, — the second extending to the Canaries, and third to 

 the Canaries, Cape Verdes, and even St. Helena ; and the Pupa 

 Tnicrospora, which is essentially sylvan and unlikely to be 

 introduced by accidental means, crops up likewise in the Azores, 

 the Madeiras, and the Canaries. Then the depauperated phasis 

 of the European Pupa uinhilicaia^ which was separated by Mr. 

 Lowe under the name of P. anconostoina (and which I am not 

 aware has been observed on the European continent) is so 

 strictly ' Atlantic ' that it ranges from the Azores to St. Helena; 

 and the rather undue development of the Vitrinas and Piipte 

 (the latter under an emphatically Madeiran and Canarian type), 

 as well as of the Leptaxis section of the genus Helix (so sugges- 

 tive of the Madeiras and Cape Verdes), although under expo- 

 nents which are themselves distinct, is much in harmony with 

 the idea of this Atlantic ' province ' being but portions of a 

 once continuous whole. The appearance, too, at the Azores of 

 that remarkable Cyclostomideous genus Craspedopoma, so 



B 2 



