460 Mr. W. H. Benson's Conchological Notices. 



^rgyreia and of an Ipomcea (on which it banqueted voraciously, and 

 which it could not have met with in its natural haunts,) it became 

 greenish. When the excrement is emitted the head is withdrawn into 

 the shell, the orifice in the mantle being exposed, whence the excre- 

 ment falls over the foot, and the animal coming out immediately, it is 

 passed by the action of the muscles under the sole to the posterior ex- 

 tremity, where it is finally, quitted. 



The corrugations of the upper part of the foot are parallel to each 

 other and elegantly disposed ; near the base they are discontinued, and are 

 bounded by an impressed line and a ridge parallel with the edge of the 

 sole. The motion of the heiirt is distinctly visible in the pericardium 

 while the animal is crawling. The antrum penis is situated nearer to 

 the head than in Stenopus cruentatuSy forming an equilateral triangle 

 with the bases of the upper and lower tentacula on the right side of the 

 neck : the generative organ is retort-shaped and hyaline. The animal is 

 hermaphrodite and may be found in reciprocal copulation hke the snail. 

 The pulmonary cavity occupies about half the last whorl when the ani- 

 mal is in motion, and the ramifying vessels of its coat are visible through 

 the shell; beyond it lies what appears to be the liver, of a dark brown 

 colour, lengthened out towards the spire. The tumid part of the supe- 

 rior tentacula is elongate, not globular, as in Helix aspersa, &c. 



Though the dead specimens of the shell are not unfrequent in uncul- 

 tivated places of the Gangetic plain, from Calcutta to Cawnpore, I 

 sought in vain during six years for live specimens until I discovered six 

 congregated together on the prone face of a projecting rock on the summit 

 of the great pile of Syenitic boulders at Banda in Bundelkhund, where 

 they were protected by a screen of verdure which secured a damp atmo- 

 sphere within. This was in the rainy season, and the animals were alert 

 and copulating. I subsequently received a specimen from the Hill Fort 

 of Callinger, and I afterwards discovered a collection of them laid up in 

 their dry-season quarters, and protected by their false opercula, in the 

 crevices of ruinous masonry in the old fort at Rigmahal on the Ganges. 



In 1832 I brought to England specimens of these snails, some of 

 which continued alive from December 1831, when I took them, until 



