Note on Limax tenellus (Mull.). 23 



In Britain it was first recorded by Joshua Alder in 1848, in 

 his " Catalogue of the Mollusca of Northumberland and 

 Durham," a specimen having been received by him from 

 a wood at AUansford, on the Derwent, in the latter county 

 {Trans. Tyneside Nat. Field Cluh, vol. i. p. 125). This record 

 was repeated by Forbes and Hanley in their " History of 

 British Mollusca," published in 1853, and a figure of the 

 species given from a coloured drawing, by Alder, of the 

 AUansford specimen. Jeffreys, in the first volume of his 

 "British Conchology," published in 1862, seemed to doubt 

 the validity of the species (vol. i. p. 139), but in the 

 Appendix to his work, published in 1869, he inserted a 

 description of it, and recorded its occurrence at North 

 Mavine in Shetland (vol. v. p. 156). In 1878 and 1888 

 there were records from the south-west of Scotland and 

 Yorkshire respectively, but not much weight was attached 

 to these (cf. Roebuck's paper in Annals Scot. Nat. Hist., 

 October 1904), and gradually the name of Limax tenellus 

 was dropped out of the British list. It was reintroduced, 

 however, in September 1903, in the part of Mr J. W. Taylor's 

 splendid " Monograph of the Land and Freshwater Mollusca 

 of the British Isles " then issued, but solely on the strength 

 of the old records. " This little species," it is there remarked, 

 " is comparatively seldom observed, owing to the prevailing 

 ignorance of its habits of life, and it is to be hoped that the 

 claims of this species to rank as a British species will be 

 firmly established, now that attention is drawn to these 

 peculiarities." Its predilection in Germany for pine-clad 

 heaths and pine forests in general, where it feeds on Boleti 

 and other fungi during the autumn, is then commented on. 



On reading the above-mentioned account of its habits, 

 I made a note of the localities in the "Forth" area most 

 likely to hold the species, and had tried some of them for 

 it without success, when, on 3rd ult., I received word from 

 Mr W. D. Roebuck, F.L.S., Leeds, that he had got undoubted 

 Limax tenellus from Mr Robert Godfrey, of Edinburgh, by 

 whom they were collected in the pine forest of Rothie- 

 murchus, Inverness-shire, in the end of August. All credit 

 is due to Mr Godfrey for his discovery, which has been 



