SAINT HELENA. 531 



more reraarkable, inasmuch as, with the exception of at the 

 Cape Verdes, where it just puts in a feeble appearance, it is 

 totally unrepresented in the more northern archipelagos. 

 Nevertheless, owing to the vicious habit which so many natura- 

 lists have practically adopted, and still persist in, oi describing as 

 neiu almost anything that is put into their hands from a distant 

 country, often from unique examples and without taking the 

 trouble to compare them at all with such types as may already 

 have been published from the same locality, I cannot but think 

 tliat the actual species have been made far too numerous. In- 

 deed I am exceedingly doubtful whether more tlian two or three 

 Succineas, at the utmost, are indicated, amongst the mass of 

 individuals which may easily be obtained in the intermediate 

 and elevated districts of the island ; nevertheless one of them 

 (the S. Bensoniana, Forbes) is so variable, both in stature and 

 solidity, according to the dryness (or otherwise) of the exact 

 region in which it occurs, that it seems to me to have done duty 

 for at least four ' species ' (so-called), if not indeed for five. 

 Moreover as this particular member of the genus exists equally 

 in a subfossil state, the subfossilized specimens have been re- 

 garded at once as specifically distinct from the recent ones ; 

 and thus an amount of confusion has been set-up which (as in 

 the case of the Bidmii) is simply deplorable. The slovenly 

 manner indeed in which the few St. Helena Land-Shells were 

 treated by both Forbes and Benson, — vrho did not even attempt 

 to point out in what their assumed novelties differ from those 

 which had previously been enunciated, and who appeared to 

 imagine that anything like a precise reference, or date, when 

 alluding to the species of others, was altogether superfluous — is 

 only worthy of the wild and fanciful theories which were reck- 

 lessly, and almost without evidence, built upon them. In real 

 fact, anybody who has studied in the slightest degree the St. 

 Helena Succineas in situ could scarcely fail to perceive that in- 

 constancy is their most prominent feature, — even the number 

 and proportions of their whorls varying in the same actual spot, 

 and their size and relative thickness according to the degree of 

 moisture to which they have severally been exposed, as well as 

 according to the nature of the foliage on which they may have 

 been compelled to subsist. Therefore to describe as distinct 

 every insignificant phasis, or race, which might happen to be a 

 little larger or a little smaller than another, or perhaps a trifle 

 more solid or less membraneous, is only to confuse the lines of 

 specific demarcation, instead of rendering them intelligible ; 

 but, unpardonable as this is, it is at any rate less flagrant than 

 to characterize forms a/resli which have absolutely nothing 



