338 TEST ACE A ATLANTICA. 



anguleuses ou ondulees obliques, sans trace de granulations ; 

 V Adonis par centre est simplement striee. Le bord inferieur 

 de I'ouverture, laquelle forme un ovale im pen dilate, est moins 

 excave et plus largement calleux.' 



Helix lactea. 



Helix lactea, MillL, Hist. Verm. ii. 19 (1774) 

 „ „ W. et B., Ann. des Sc. Nat. 28. syn. 313 (1833) 



„ „ d'Orb., in W. et B. Hist, ii^ 2. 55 (1839) 



„ „ Mouss., Faun. Mai. des Can. 70 (1 872) 



Habitat Canariam Grandem, Teneriffam, et Hierro ; prse- 

 cipue juxta oppidos, sed interdum etiam omnino in rure, in in- 

 ferioribus degens. 



The widely spread H. lactea^ Miill., of Mediten-anean lati- 

 tudes, and which was obtained abundantly both by Mr. Leacock 

 and Mr. Lowe on the opposite coast of Morocco, is common both 

 in Grand Canary and Teneriffe,— where it is called by the 

 inhabitants ' Boca negra ;' and it was met with by Fritsch, also, 

 in Hierro. D'Orbigny considered that it was probably intro- 

 duced originally from Spain as an article of food, and it must be 

 admitted that in Grand Canary it is particularly plentiful about 

 Las Palmas, and in Teneriffe about Sta. Cruz ; yet the fact of its 

 existing also, in profusion, in the sandy and well-nigh unin- 

 habited region of El Charco, beyond Maspalomas, in the extreme 

 south of Grand Canary (where it was taken by Mr. Lowe and 

 myself in 1859), is certainly against that hypothesis. Hitherto 

 it has not been observed in any other of these various Atlantic 

 archipelagos ; though a few Canarian individuals which were 

 turned loose by Mr. Lowe, some years ago, in Madeira, may 

 perhaps have succeeded (though I think that they have not done 

 so) in introducing the species into at any rate the Funchal dis- 

 trict of that island. 



The H. lactea can be confounded with nothing else with 

 which we have here to do, — its large size, elongate subdepressed 

 contour, and solid substance, added to its broadly expanded 

 peristome, its complete freedom from an umbilicus, the minute 

 and rather irregular spiral striae with which its volutions are 

 finely decussated, and the peculiarity of its ornamentation (the 

 ground-colour being of a more or less dirty yellowish-white, 

 though with the greater portion of the surface taken-up by 

 wide, brownish, whitely-freckled bands, whilst the aperture and 

 its interior are highly polished and nearly black), being more 

 than sufficient to distinguish it. 



The Canarian examples of this large Helix appear to belong 

 to the true lactea-tjTpe, and not to the nearly allied H. punctata. 



