46 Land and Freshwater Mollusks. 



or pool a few yards round, while the next pool, though furnishing 

 other shells, had none of it. In the water near Wolsey's Farm I 

 had the pleasure of obtaining good specimens of Physa hypnorum, 

 which is rather a local shell, and the small Lymnseus tumidus 

 (it has other names), which is often overlooked or confounded with 

 small specimens of other species, also occurs in narrow ditches 

 towards the railway. 



A few words as to books most available for identification may 

 not be out of place. Lovell Reeve's " Handbook of Land and Fresh- 

 water Shells," published at 10s. 6d., is on the whole the most 

 convenient and complete ; the woodcut illustrations, executed with 

 admirable skill, illustrate every species ; and the descriptions, 

 though wanting in fullness, are precise ; the lists and indexes are 

 most convenient and ready for reference. Mr. Gwyn Jeffries's, 

 volume, the first, but sold separately, of his work on British 

 Conchology, is most interesting, the descriptions are fuller, and 

 the lists of habitats far more complete than in Reeve's work, but 

 the engravings only show typical forms, not each species : this 

 volume has, however, the advantage of a copious introduction, the 

 pleasant writing of an accomplished field naturalist. Gray's edition 

 of " Turton's Manual of Land and Freshwater Shells" was, till 

 these appeared, the only portable book that was at once scientific 

 and readable ; its plates, many of them excellent, are coloured ; 

 the book is not now easy to procure. Forbes and Hanley's large 

 work on British Conchology, in four volumes, with beautiful illus- 

 trations, includes of course the land and freshwater shells, but they 

 occur in the order of classification throughout the various volumes, 

 their work, therefore, does not form a handbook on this special 

 subject. 



Local lists, always interesting, have been published for many 

 districts in the Zoologist, Annals of Natural History, &c., and 

 many useful papers or monographs of separate species : I make 

 no allusion to the foreign literature on this subject, it is very 

 copious ; Moquin-Tandou's great work,* published not very long 

 since, is alone a mine out of which writers will dig for some time to 

 come. 



The nomenclature used in specifying the shells alluded to in 

 this little paper is generally that of Gray ; the perhaps trifling 

 details occasionally given may be excused as possibly useful to 

 young collectors. 



• There is a copy at Cambridge. 



