SAINT HELENA. 559 



shadow of evidence for us to assume that it was from St. Helena 

 at all ; a fact which he again endorses in no less than two sub- 

 sequent volumes of his Monograph, adding ' Hab. f ' both in 

 1853 and in 1876. 



In the arid regions of only a moderate altitude which were 

 once densely clothed with gum woods, — such as Thompson's 

 Wood, West Lodge, and Peak Gut, — the shell is often so very 

 thin and fragile that it is scarcely possible to get the animal 

 out of it ; and also on the now exposed sides of Flagstaff Hill 

 (from whence it was described by Pfeiffer under the name of S. 

 asperula, and where it is also equally common in a subfossilized 

 condition) it is likewise seldom very robust. The subfossil 

 examples however have often their spire rather more lengthened 

 and developed (though by no means always so) than the recent 

 ones, — not only on Flagstaff and Sugarloaf, but likewise on the 

 Barn and in the cutting of the Sidepath-road (between James- 

 town and Longwood ) above the Briars. 



Although just able to exist in the now barren districts to 

 which I have called attention, the present Succinea (like most 

 of the members of the genus) is far more at home in damp ones, 

 — delighting in even the dampest of all, when they are to be 

 had. Thus at the edge of the waterfall below the Briars Mr. 

 P. Whitehead has met with it in the dripping vegetation and 

 mud, such as might form the proper habitat of a Limnoea ; 

 though, singularly enough, highly developed as it was in con- 

 sequence, examples which he took on the drier and more ele- 

 vated Kock Eose Hill, on the opposite side of the island, are 

 scarcely distinguishable from them. And this latter fact leads 

 me to suspect that the shells which Mr. Melliss mentions as 

 strewing the ground beneath the shrubs of the native boxwood 

 (Mellissia begonifolia) in the adjoining locality of Longrange 

 are nothing more than large and well-matured ones of this same 

 species. At any rate it cannot be right to refer them, as he has 

 done, to the 8. picta of Pfeiffer (the imperialis of Benson), 

 because in turning to Pfeiffer's description, we find that not 

 only is the S. picta very much larger in stature (quite equalling 

 the Sanctce-Helenos as regards length), but that its habitat is 

 ' Diana's Peak,' — thus shewing, I think unmistakeably, that it 

 belongs to the species, or form, from High Peak, &c, which I 

 have already noticed, and which Mr. Melliss has cited as the 

 ' S. rudorina, Gould.' 



The S. Bensoniana is the only Succinea which I have yet 

 seen in a subfossil condition ; and since it has lingered on to 

 modern times, it would seem to be as plastic in its habits as it 

 is in its substance and outward configuration. Although the 

 larger examples, as regards size, nearly treble the smaller ones 



