HORSLEY : HELIX NEMORALIS AND HELIX HORTENSIS. IQ 



enough/'' and needs no term implying qualification or indecision. 

 And the corresponding variety in hoytcusis is incarnata. To 

 classical Latin this word is unknown : in mediaeval Latin it 

 would, of course, be comnion, as meaning having become flesh. 

 What was running in the namer's substitute for a mind was 

 apparently the idea of flesh-coloured, and the fancy that incarnatus 

 referred to a tint, and not an operation or a state. From cherry- 

 red to pink, grade the hues of both rubella and incarnata, and rubra 

 would exactly and accurately describe both. And then the 

 yellow grounded, transparent banded variety of hortensis is, if you 

 please, called arenicola, or the denizen of the sands ! For myself, 

 I have never found hortensis of any variety on one of the sand- 

 hills I have searched, and I never found any one who could guess 

 why this name was supposed to be appropriate. I did indeed 

 once find on the Deal dunes or Sandwich sand-hills one or two 

 of the corresponding variety of nemoralis — i.e., hyalozonata ; and 

 as this was (like all the forms of nemoralis I have seen that have 

 no pigment-producing power for their bands) not black-lipped, I 

 might, if unobservant and foolish enough, have taken it for 

 hortensis, and have called it avenicola, though dozens of other 

 varieties abounded in the same position, and would be equally 

 entitled to the name. I suppose the namer of arenicola has long 

 become humicola, and we cannot interrogate him as to Avhat he 

 might be pleased to call his reason for giving this name. Peace, 

 therefore, to his hashes ! 



Is it really impossible for British conchologists to determine 

 on the common adoption of an intelligible nomenclature, and, 

 considering how undoubtedly allied are the two species, nemoralis 

 and hortensis, to adopt the term lutea for what is called libeUula in 

 one and Intea in the other ; rubra for what is rubella in one and 

 incarnata in the other ; and hyalozonata for the hyalozonata of 

 nemoralis and the arenicola of hortensis ?\- 



I pass on to give a few notes on the differences between 

 nemoralis and hortensis, which, by the consent of the majority of 



* Does not this, like all of the colour variations dignified wfth the mis-applied 

 title of varieties, shade into its fellows, and niaj^ not this be the real reason 

 of the qualifying name ? — Ed. 



t Or perhaps if the suggestion made by Mr. B. B. Woodward in " The 

 Zoologist " (Nov., 1885, " On some variations in Helix avbustoyum, Linn.), 

 of simply using the " terms, yellow, red or white variations " and phrases 

 such as, " with transparent bands " and so on, in conjunction with the band 

 formulae, was followed, the difficulty would be met. — Ed. 



