244 Mr. L. Reeve on the Geographical Distribution of the Bulimi. 



coffee plantations about Tejuca at 1000 feet above the sea-level, 

 the Bulimi, as in the lower parts of Venezuela, have their shells 

 characteristic of less moisture and fewer opportunities of retire- 

 ment. B. papyraceus may be quoted as an example. The more 

 lofty and thickly wooded parts of Minas Geraes produce a type 

 with shells of sohd growth and intertropical brilliancy of colour, 

 represented by B. Milleri, bilabiatus, planidens, melanostoma , &c. 

 In the vicinity of Bahia is a group with shells of totally different 

 construction and of lighter substance, B. navicula, auris-leporis, 

 Sec, in which the last whorl is peculiarly convoluted at a right 

 angle with the axis of the spire. Lastly, at Caravelhas, below 

 Bahia, and at the little island of Coxaprego, at the mouth of the 

 Iguaripe river, is a remarkable type, represented by B. calcareus, 

 obeliscus, syhaticus, &c., of which the shell, presenting a singular 

 contrast with the preceding group, is composed of a large number 

 of whorls, drawn out into the elongated form of a Turritella. 

 This partial grouping of opposite forms, within a comparatively 

 limited area having few natural boundaries, will doubtless become 

 broken up to a certain extent with the advancement of human 

 progress. Already have the climate and natural vegetation of 

 Rio been modified by the clearing away of the neighbouring 

 forests of the Corcovado range of hills, which tends to reduce 

 the humidity and other circumstances that combine to favour the 

 growth and calcification of the terrestrial moUusca. 



Owing probably to the recent geological disturbances that are 

 supposed by Lyell, Darwin and others to have taken place in the 

 southern extremity of the American continent, there are no ty- 

 pical provinces o{ Bulimi below Rio. The genus is represented 

 by one or two scattered species in Buenos Ayres extending in the 

 widely distributed jB. sporadicus to the banks of the Rio Negro, 

 but none are recorded from the sterile riverless plains of Pata- 

 gonia. That the genus should be suddenly arrested at this point 

 in a tropical condition, without any of the graduated states which 

 abound in the north temperate countries of both hemispheres, 

 is doubtless owing to the upraising of the land in this part of 

 South America, which Mr. Darwin considers to have occurred 

 within the period of the now-existing sea-shells. Mr. Cuming 

 collected worn shells of Valuta Brasiliana (a species living on 

 the shores of Buenos Ayres) in a bank of other dead shells fifty 

 miles inland. The climate is many degrees warmer in Patagonia 

 and Tierra del Puego than in the same latitude of the northern 

 hemisphere. "Evergreen trees,'"' says Mr. Darwin, "flourish 

 luxuriantly under it, humming-birds may be seen sucking the 

 flowers, and parrots feeding on the seeds." Snails being of 

 less fugitive character than birds, and offering fewer means of 

 transport than plants, appear not to have migrated thither. The 



