344 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



salt waters of the Solent ; or its exceptionally large size may have proved 

 its destruction in its exposed favourite haunts. The latter supposition is 

 the more probable one, as it would account for its general rarity, and at 

 the same time help to explain the prevalence in the same exposed haunts 

 of the smaller Helicida." — Paul Henry Stokoe (Wycombe Court, Bucks), 

 Nature, May 3. 



" Only a few more lines to say, in consequence of the communication of 

 Mr. Stokoe in your last number (p. 6), that he will find the Mollusca in 

 their geological relations treated in the introduction to my work on ' British 

 Conchology,' vol. i., p. cix. The distribution of H. pomatia in this country 

 and on the Continent is noticed in pp. 177 and 178 of that volume, and in 

 the supplement to the fifth volume."— J. Gwyn Jeffreys (1, The Terrace, 

 Kensington), Nature, May 10. 



"I have found this snail freely in the hedge-bottoms of Hertfordshire 

 lanes, where the soil was a dark alluvial mould, certainly not cretaceous. 

 I suspect that even in its known localities it is very local." — Henry Cecil 

 (Breguer, Bournemouth), Nature, May 10. 



" In two of the localities mentioned for this snail — Dorking, Surrey, 

 and Woodford, Northamptonshire — there seems some reason to suspect it 

 to be a modern introduction. From 1849 to 1852 I lived within two miles 

 of Woodford, and often found the shells in a small wood known as Woodford 

 Shrubbery. It was commonly said in the neighbourhood at that time that 

 the snails were brought from abroad by the gentleman — I think General 

 Arbuthnot — who had formed the Shrubbery some thirty years before that 

 date. I also found, many years ago, shells ol the same species about the 

 foot of Box Hill, near Dorking, and was told by a former resident in that 

 neighbourhood that the snails were brought from Italy by Mr. Hope, of 

 Deepdene, who was well known in the early part of this century as a writer 

 on the mediaeval architecture of Italy. I give the statements for what they 

 may he worth." — J. C. (Loughton), Nature, May 10. 



" Although this species is decidedly local in this country, yet it is 

 interesting to note that the counties in which it has been recorded are 

 contiguous to oue another. Its course of distribution appears to pass 

 through Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hants, Wilts, Gloucestershire, Berks, 

 Oxou, Bucks, Herts, and Northamptonshire; and this seems to support 

 Mr. Stokoe in his suggestion {' Nature,' vol. xxviii. p. 0) that it may be a 

 geologically recent importation Irom France (to the northern portion of 

 which it is confined in that country). In Murray's ' Handbook to Surrey,' 

 p. 70, Helve pomatia is stated to abound at Tyting Farm, near Guildford, 

 'said to have been introduced from Italy' by an Earl of Arundel; and 

 Bevan's 'Guide to Surrey,' p. Ill, mentions the same locality as the 

 ' habitat of the edible snail, imported from Italy,' tfce. I visited this spot 

 iu September, 1880, iu quest of H. pomatia, and mentioned my object to 



