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252 HELIX ASPERSA. 
In North Lincoln, it is reported by Mr. Kennard from within a Roman 
drain at Skegness. 
In Cheshire, Mr. B. B. Woodward has recorded its presence in deposits 
resembling ‘‘ kitchen-middens,” formerly on the shores of the river Mersey, 
but now about a mile therefrom. 
In Laneashire, it has been found by Mr. J. Wilfrid Jackson near the top 
of the ‘ cave-earth ” deposits in the Dog Holes, Warton Crag, Carnforth. 
In Northumberland South, many shells of Helia aspersa were found in 
1907 between two concrete floors in excavating the remains of the Roman 
city of Corstopitum (A. Meek, Archeologia Aliana, 1908, vol. iv., p. 99). 
In Cheviotland, it was found in a bed of gravel on Holy Island in 1854 
(Geo. Johnston, Proc. Berw. Nat. Club, 1874, vol. vii., p. 35). 
In Ireland, it was found in West Galway by Mr. 'I’. Rogers in alluvial 
deposit at Gorteen, and it is recorded by Collier and Standen from the 
earthy bed about one foot in thickness overlaid by a deposit of blown 
sand at Dog’s Bay, Roundstone; in a lower zone of the same land shell 
deposit, Mr. R. Welch has remarked that the A. wspersa are large and 
heavy, and associated with the large and ponderous H. nemoralis. 
In West Mayo, Mr. Welch found it im Sept. 1909 in the “kitchen- 
middens” on Clare Island, but these deposits, being very superficial, may 
have been disturbed, and the presence of H. aspersa as a genuine relic 
doubtful, especially as the species abounds in the vicinity in a living state, 
and none could be found in the land-shell deposit beneath the “middens.” 
In Clare, Miss Parkinson found the species abundant in July 1905 and 
Nov. 1907, in the deposits of Drumeliff Crannoge, Ballyalia Lake, near 
Ennis. 
In France, according to M. Fagot, it is found in many of the quaternary 
deposits about Villefranche, Haute Garonne. 
In Algeria, Bourguignat, on the authority of Deshayes, reports it from 
the recent sands of Doneira near Algiers, and from the sandy deposits of 
Cape Férat near Bone. 
In Tunis, in the ‘‘travertin” beds of the Isle of Galité, Dr. Issel found 
specimens very close to the Sicilian Helix mazzullii. 
Variation.—The variation of this species 1s chiefly in the character of 
its colour and markings; the differences in the shape of the shell, though 
striking in the extreme forms, is yet not really great, but the colour 
variation, which varies from a primrose-yellow with or without darker 
bands or markings to an almost uniform black, produces some very pretty 
combinations. 
The markings are usually displayed as more or less distinct revolving 
bands of a darker shade, but the spiral character of the fasciation may 
become totally obscured by the diffusion of the dark pigment and the pale 
ground tint be only shown amidst a multitude of flamboyant markings 
which, in other examples, tend to join or fuse together and form irregular 
transverse bandings. 
In form of shell, there is a pronounced tendency for the obliquely globose 
form to predominate in the more northerly part of its range, but in the 
southern regions, as in Southern France, Spain, Portugal, etc., the species 
is more inclined to be acuminate and to approximate in form and in 
transverse sculpture with the Sicilian Helia mazzullii, a probably earlier 
offshoot from the same stemma. 
