90 



THE DISTRIBUTION AND HABITS OF ALOPIA, A SUB-GENUS OF 



CLAUSILIA. 



By tlie Rev. A. H. Cooke, M.A., F.Z.S. 



Read 8th March, 1912. 



The sub-genus Alopia was first constituted by H. & A. Adams 

 ill 1858 for a group of dextrorsal Clausilia inhabiting Transylvania. 

 Tlie description given in Adams is a word-for-word translation of 

 Charpentier's cliaracterization of liis section^ in his grouping of 

 Clausilia,' but the French author gave no sub-generic names to his 

 sections. Both authors grouped only three species under Alopia, 

 viz., Biehi, Pfr. (Parr.), Lischlceana, Parr., pruinosa, Parr., wliile 

 tliey placed several other species now reckoned as Alopia (e.g. plumbea, 

 llossra., straminicollis, Parr., canescensi, Parr., regalis, Parr.) under 

 another section. 



Two discoveries caused the subsequent enlai'gement of the sub-ge«us. 

 In the first place it was observed, by E. A. Bielz and otliers, that 

 several sinistral species were also to be grouped under Alopia, and, 

 secondly, Adolph Schmidt pointed out ^ that the so-called Balea 

 or Baleo-Clausilia of the Southern Carpathians were also Alopia, 

 and that the absence of a clausilium was no true ground for separating 

 them sub-generically, a view stoutly contested by E. A. Bielz. ^ 



My object in the present paper is not so much to attempt to settle 

 disputed points of classification or identification, as to record the 

 impressions I have myself received from two visits paid to Transylvania 

 in the autumns of 1909 and 1911, with the special purpose of 

 observing the habits, mode of life, and distribution of the group. 



1. Distribution. — The Alopia group is entirely peculiar to Hungary 

 and the part of lloumania immediately adjacent. More than this, 

 of the seventy-two species, sub-species, and varieties enumerated 

 by Ivimakowicz,^ seventy-one are found in the south-east corner of 

 Hungary known to us as Transylvania, and to the Austrians as 

 Siebenhiirgen, and on the lloumanian slope of the adjacent Carpathians. 

 More than this still, ot these seventy-one, sixty occur within a radius 

 of 40 km. from Kronstadt (Hung. Brasso), which town, lying as it 

 does at the foot of the Carpatliians, and only 13 km. as the crow 

 flies from the Roumanian frontier, may be regarded as the nucleus 

 of the group. And furtlier, if a circle be described with Kronstadt 

 as the centre, and radius 40 km., and a diameter be run across this 

 circle from east to west, of the sixty species, sub-species, and varieties 

 living witliin the circle, six only occur to the north of the diameter 

 and fifty-four to the south, a sufficient indication that Alopia is 

 essentially a raountain-dflrelling group. 



^ Genera, vol. ii, p. 181. 



" Journal de Concbyliologie, ser. I, vol. iii, p. 361, 1852. 



=* Syst. Europ. Clansilien, 1868, pp. 3, 4, 18-28; Zeitscb. Ges. Naturwiss., 



vol. viii, pp. 407-13, 1856. 

 ■* Fauna dcr Land- und Siissicasser-Molhiskcn Siebenbiirgens-, 1867, p. 103. 

 ^ Verb. Siebenbiirg-. Ver., vol. xliii, pp. 19-58, 1894. 



