LITTORINA. 43 



L. sAXATiLis, Johnston. 



Minute, thin, subglobose, smooth, or obscurely striated. Whorls 

 only four, the penult peculiarly big, and, as well as the body, 

 which is broader than long, tumid ; base short, much rounded : 

 apex blunt. Aperture suborbicular, rather more than half the 

 length of the shell, broadly rounded, and not filled up anteriorly : 

 pillar attenuated below : outer lip peculiarly arcuated, meeting 

 the body almost at right angles to it. 



Plate LXXXVI. fig. 4, 5. 



Litlorina saxatilis, Johnston, Berwick Club, vol. i. p. 268. — Macgil. Moll. 

 Aberd. p. 138, from wliich Brit. Marine Conch, p. 258. — 

 Alder, Moll. Northumb. and Durh. p. 56. — Philippi, 

 Neue Conch, vol. iii. p. 66, pi. 7, f. 16. 

 „ nef/lecta. Bean, Brit. Marine Conch, p. 266. 



As Olivi had described a Littorina under the name 

 saxatilis, the appellation neglecta has been substituted for 

 that of the present species. We revert, however, to the 

 specific epithet by which our shell was first designated, 

 because we consider that the Italian autlior has not suffi- 

 ciently defined his species to secure its positive identifica- 

 tion. Moreover there can be little doubt that he meant 

 the Littorina Neritoides. 



This minute shell seems to us more like a smoothisli 

 dwarf form of the L. patula, but as Philippi, in his recent 

 monograph of this genus, sanctions the species, we have 

 unwillingly retained it. When most typical it is of a glo- 

 bosely subconoid shape, and of equal length and breadth, 

 is generally a little glossy, thin, typically smooth, but occa- 

 sionally with obscure raised spiral lines, and for the most 

 part is of a whitish ash-colour, painted with an irregular 

 net-work or tessellation of obliquely subspiral wavy linear 

 streaks of an olivaceous brown or dusky smoke colour ; 



