206 



HELICIDJE. 



west of France, but it does not appear to have been 

 noticed elsewhere on the Continent. 



M. Bonchard-Chantereaux, who was the first to dis- 

 cover this species in France, but who mistook it for H. 

 revelata, says that it inhabits young alders (the foliage 

 of which constitutes its food) in the woods near Bou- 

 logne, and protects itself from the heat of the day by 

 clinging to the underside of the leaves, falling with 

 them in September and October ; and that it then occu- 

 pies itself in the work of reproduction, for which the 

 dead leaves offer a convenient 'place of retreat. Its eggs 

 number from 40 to 50, and are globular and of an opaline 

 lustre. The young are excluded about the twentieth 

 day after the eggs are laid, and become adult at the end 

 of from ten to twelve months. These pretty little snails 

 are tolerably active, and appear to be nearly always 

 moving their horns about. They secrete a good deal of 

 slime. According to Moquin-Tandon they are grega- 

 rious and sociable, and have been observed each mutually 

 polishing its neighbour's shell with its foot. 



The shell differs from that of any other kind of British 

 Helix in its peculiar sculpture, which resembles that of 

 a Continental species, H. incarnata. In shape and the 

 narrowness of its umbilicus it somewhat resembles H. 

 sericea ; but in the present species the spire is more de- 

 pressed, the last or body whorl is proportionally larger 

 than the others, and the epidermis is never hairy like 

 that of the last-named species, or H. revelata. The tex- 

 ture of this shell is also far more fragile than in either of 

 those species, and its colour is uniformly of a light yellow- 

 ish-brown, instead of whitish or dark greenish-brown. 



This is not the H. fusca of Poiret (whose work pre- 

 ceded that of Montagu by two years) ; but as that shell 

 is only a variety of H. nemoralis and allied to the one 



