THE 



JOURNAL OF MALACOLOGY. 



No. 2. July, 1897. ^°^- ^^• 



NOTES ON HELIX NEMORALIS, LINNE, 

 AND HELIX HORTENSIS, MUELLER. 



By the Rev. J. W. HORSLEY, M.A., 



Rector of St. Peter's, Walworth, and Chairman of the London Branch of 

 the Conchological Society. 



It was disgust that made me a student of snails. Not the 

 affected disgust of a young woman when she discovers a 

 beautiful and interesting specimen of Avion atev upon the rose 

 she has unnecessarily plucked ; but the disgust at myself, a 

 naturalist by heredity and by environment and education from 

 my earliest years, when I found by the inspection of a collection 

 of British land shells made by a young friend that I had poked 

 about hedges and ditches, woods and cliffs, for thirty out of the 

 forty years I had lived, and yet had never noticed shells so 

 striking in colour and variation as Helix ncmoralis. I set to work 

 at once to remedy this defect in my character as a general 

 observer of nature, and at first collected only nemoralis and 

 hortensis. Soon, however, this led me to help the collections of 

 others and to form one for myself by gathering all the British 

 land and freshwater molluscs. And then I cast my eyes abroad 

 that I might better learn how to see at home, and laid the 

 foundation of what is now a fairly large collection of the 

 Helicidae of the world. The path that proved so pleasant to me 

 is one on which I have induced the feet of not a few lads and 

 men to tread, and with beginners I have always directed their 

 attention first to these two Helices, so striking and so common. 



