LIMN^EUS. 



209 



"Leach ;" Jeffreys, Linn. Trans, xvi. 276. Limneus tinctus. 

 Jeffreys, 1. c. 378392. 



Var. 1., apex decollated. Mag. N. Hist. vii. 161. f. 32.; 

 Linn. Trans, viii. t. 5. f. 8. (See fig. 49 p. 200.) 



In marshes and ponds. 



Animal yellow-brown or cinereous, speckled with 

 lighter colour. 



Shell three quarters of an inch long, brown horn- 

 colour, rather opaque, suddenly sloping in Fig. 51. 

 a conic manner, the volutions hardly raised, 

 slightly striate longitudinally, and crossed 

 with more remote transverse ones, like the 

 facets of cut glass ; aperture oval, cover- 

 ing nearly half the shell, often chocolate- 

 brown and glossy in the inside, sometimes 

 rosy about the pillar, where the peristome L.palustris. 

 is spread and glossy, forming a slight umbilicus. 



These shells vary very greatly in size ; in their 

 colour, from pale brown to dark violet brown, and 

 especially the colour of the throat, which is rarely 

 bright violet brown; in the thickness of the sub- 

 stance of the shell ; and in the shape, occasioned by 

 the different degrees of the ventricoseness of the 

 whorls. 



The smaller specimens often have their tips trun- 

 cate. (See fig. 49.) Mr. Alder thinks that var. 0. 

 of Mr. Jeffreys, which is found in rivers, frequently 

 in the tide- way, and never has the size of those 

 found in ponds, is intermediate between L. palustris 

 and L. fossarius. Probably the small size is pro- 

 duced by the current not allowing the animal its 

 usual rest ; we often regard a different habitation as 



p 



