THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THIRD SERIES. 
Vor. III.) MAY, 1879. [No. 29. 
THE LAND AND FRESH-WATER MOLI.USCA OF THE 
MALTESE GROUP. 
By H. W. Fernpen, F.G.S., C.M.Z.8. 
Wurst resident in Malta, during 1873 and 1874, I paid 
considerable attention to the land and fresh-water shells of that 
island and Gozo. The number of species included in this list is 
comparatively small; but two species of Helix—H. melitensis, 
Férrusac, and H. Spratti, Pfeiffer—are supposed to be peculiar to 
the group. Two species of Clausilia, the one confined to an area 
of a few acres in the island of Malta, the other almost equally 
local in Gozo, are extremely interesting on this account. The 
species of Paludina and Physa found in Malta and Gozo have 
been accorded specific rank by Professor Benoit. 
Several species of land-shells not included in this list have 
been recorded as natives of Malta, but on insufficient authority. 
In the autumn of 1874, after a long continuation of rainy weather 
and north-west winds, I found great numbers of land-shells, 
certainly not indigenous to Malta, stranded in sheltered coves 
along the coast facing the island of Sicily. On examination they 
proved to be all dead shells, plugged at the mouth with a tenacious 
blue clay, which converted them into floats. These had doubtless 
been washed down by the flooded rivers of Sicily, and discharged 
in vast numbers into the Mediterranean Sea. The prevalent 
north-west winds had wafted them, along with fragments of 
pumice-stone and broken reeds, to the coast of Malta. As in 
some spots I picked up hundreds of these shells in the course of 
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