348 TEST ACE A ATLANTIC A. 



the archipelago (though we might well expect, perhaps, to meet 

 with it in Grand Canary), and it is simply monstrous therefore 

 that MM. Webb and Berthelot should have cited it as spread 

 over the entire Group. Such loose assertions as these are abso- 

 lutely unpardonable in the fauna of any country in which the 

 most punctilious accuracy as regards habitat is a sine qua non ; 

 and even had there been reason to suspect that the H. plicaria 

 was not altogether confined to Teneriffe, still MM. Webb and 

 Berthelot could not have been in a position to vouch for its uni- 

 versality, inasmuch as they had collected but very imperfectly 

 in some of the outlying islands, and indeed on Hierro had not 

 so much as once even set foot 1 But throughout the whole of 

 their gigantic ' Histoire ' this extreme slovenliness on the im- 

 portant question of localities meets one on nearly every page ; 

 and although it was an easy method for themselves, to define 

 the range of a species by simply citing ' toutes les Canaries ' as 

 its habitat, nevertheless no truthful monographer could possibly 

 accept any such statement unless some proof was given, at the 

 same time, that it is tenable ; and in the present instance their 

 innuendos concerning the H. plicaria are utterly discreditable, 

 for, so far as we have any data for forming an opinion, the 

 species would appear to be (not universally Canarian^ but) 

 exclusively Teneriffan. 



There can be no fear of confounding the H. plicaria with 

 anything else with which we are here concerned, its rather 

 flattened (though completely imkeeled) contour and corneous 

 brown surface (which is paler, or yellower, beneath, and on 

 which anything like darker bands are rarely traceable), in con- 

 junction with its white and broadly-flattened peristome, and the 

 remote but extremely elevated and transversely-sculptured cos- 

 tate ridges with which it is beset, giving it a character essen- 

 tially its own. The very minute impressions which crenulate 

 its oblique transverse ribs will be seen, when closely inspected, 

 to be the result of a system of densely-packed spiral lines, 

 which are conspicuous on the summits, or edges, of the costse, 

 but are obsolete in the spaces between them. 



I possess a few examples of the H. plicaria in a distinctly 

 subfossilized condition, and in which the ridges are rather less 

 developed and less decidedly crenulate, but I cannot now quite 

 recall whence I obtained them. 



Helix inutilis. 



Helix inutilis, Mouss., Faun. Mai. des Can. 81. pi. 5. 



. f. 1, 2 (1872) 

 Pfeiff., Mon. Hel. vii. 425 (1876) 



