ha * 
Transactions. 105 
may not be thrown away on any here present who may be 
induced to work in this department. Of the three very common 
garden snails, H. Aspersa, nemoralis, and hortensis, it is scarcely 
necessary to say more than that, in most people’s opinion, the 
less we have and see of them the better for our gardens and our- 
selves. H. arbustorwm is almost as common, if not indeed in 
some localities more frequent than hortensis. Many of the 
Zonites are abundant — nitidulus and cellarius especially. 
Clausilia rugosa may be found in the chinks of many an old wall 
by the score ; H. hispida and concinna with v. subrufa. I have 
taken dozens off in a very few minutes from under the leaves 
of strawberry plants ; while you can hardly lift a biggish stone 
on a crumbly bank of rubbish and ‘‘weeds” without seeing H. 
rotundata. Among the aquatic mollusks Valvata cristata, 
Planorbis Nautileus, L. palustris, and An. lacustris are the rarest 
—the last I have found only in one locality, in the water of Tarff. 
Sphaerium corneum and Bithynia tentaculata are to be seen 
in numberless quantities in many a shallow runlet of the Dee, 
more particularly near Threave Castle. 
And now, lastly, for a brief paragraph of suggestion to any 
members who may be induced to give the help of their enthusiasm 
in working out the distribution of our mollusks. It is always 
pleasant to break up virgin soil—to work in a new field—to 
explore. And in hunting for mollusks in Galloway and Dum- 
friesshire there is, besides this charm, the added attractiveness of 
its beautifully-varied natural scenery and rock configuration—a 
potent factor in our botany, and one which, I am sanguine enough 
to think, may be quite as interesting in almost every other 
department of natural science. Other motives for collecting 
mollusks are, the comparative easiness of the work, the slight 
outfit required, the small space into which your specimens can be 
stowed, ready at any moment for reference and study. Then 
the actual charm of the quest itself, ¢.g., the exciting events of a 
good day’s dredging over a lonely loch, hauling up with your 
stout line and grapple perhaps a cluster of Awodonte, or an ante- 
diluvian boot, a battered and rusty axe head, or some long 
searched for tiny mollusk like Planorbis nautileus, or a rare 
aquatic plant ; the delight of watching, as you lie full length on 
the flowery brink of some pellucid stream, its tiny deeps and 
shallows, with the minnows “staying their wavy bodies ’gainst 
the stream,” or its amber pools where innumerable Limncei and 
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