On the Mollusca of the Club District. 147 



■ponds and ditches where vegetation runs riot, he attains 

 aldermanic proportions. Observing that differences of locality 

 and food produce corresponding differences in the shape of the 

 shell, I have numbered and recorded each specimen taken, and 

 I find that the rule, though not absolute, generally holds good. 

 The two extreme types are — one from a very rapid rill flowing 

 into the large pond at Frensham, the other from the ditch at 

 Moat Farm, near Godstone. L. auricularia is not very 

 common ; it occurs in the Surrey and Sussex Canal at 

 Bramley, the Basingstoke Canal, near Frimley, and on Earls- 

 wood Common. L. palustris we have in plenty. A well 

 marked variety {conica) having a distinct umbilicus, inhabits 

 the fields bordering the river at Putney, where it lives quite 

 out of the water about the roots of sedges. L. tnincatula is 

 not often met with. Like the last-named variety it sometimes 

 leaves its native element and rambles in the fields. I have taken 

 it at Fetcham Common, under stones several yards from the 

 water. Last autumn while walking out with Mr. Beeby, near 

 Oxted, we found a tiny pool, evidently made during the railway 

 works, containing perhaps forty gallons of water in which some 

 chara was growing ; we searched the plants and mud carefully 

 but found no molluscan life of any kind. We visited the same 

 pool on the 7th April this year, and took five L. truncatida 

 fully grown. L. glabra, a very rare snail in the south-eastern 

 counties, occurs sparingly near Hedgecourt Common. 



Ot Ancylns both species occur. Fine specimens of A. 

 JiuviatiUs inhabit the rapid little stream at Limpsfield, and the 

 shells are quite free from the usual incrustation. A favourite 

 haunt of a /I. laciistris is between the fronds of rushes growing 

 in the shallows of the Mole about Leatherhead. 



Limacidae. — We now come to the slugs, most of which are 

 too common to call for especial remark. Avion ater battens 

 on the sewage farms and attains a gigantic size. The 

 beautiful sea-green variety of Liiuax arborum occurs in a 

 garden on Bramley Hill, where a little family of them lives in 

 a hollow in an old oak. Slugs are most difficult to preserve in 

 a satisfactory manner. In the first place the animal must be 

 killed with extreme rapidity in order that the body and tentacles 

 may not get time to retract, and secondly a medium has to be 

 found which will not destroy the colour. Tate recommends 

 corrosive sublimate as a speedy killer, but I find this only 

 acts well with one species L. viaxiiiius, indifferently well with 

 two more of the same genus, L.flaviis and L. arborum, and 

 very badly with all others. If an adult L. maximus be allowed 

 to crawl on a slip of card till fully extended, with the res- 

 piratory orifice open, and then plunged into a saturated solution 

 of corrosive sublimate it hardly retracts at all, the head and 



