JOURNAL OF CONCHOLOGY. 8 1 



On Zonites glaber Studer as a member of the 

 British Fauna. — Some misconception would appear to exist 

 regarding the discovery of Zonites glaber in this country. The 

 honour of adding this species to our list is usually given to Mr. 

 Thomas Rogers of Manchester, a most industrious and ardent 

 conchologist. Dr. Jeffreys, to whom the specimens had been 

 sent for identification, did not appear to suspect any previous 

 records, as in ' The Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' 

 for May, 1870, he thus chronicles the occurrence : — " My 

 correspondent, Mr. Thos. Rogers of Manchester, has added 

 another species to this well-worked department of our fauna. 

 Specimens of a Zonites he has sent me, collected by him under 

 stones at Marple Wood, in Cheshire, prove to be the Helix 

 glabra of Studer." 



Rimmer's lately published work, ' The Land and Fresh- 

 water Shells of the British Isles,' throws no fresh light on the 

 subject, our knowledge of it as an inhabitant of this country 

 being assumed to commence with its finding by Mr. Rogers. 



Dr. J. E. Gray, as long ago as 1840, was well aware of the 

 occurrence of this species in the British Isles, but he regarded 

 it as a large variety of its near ally Zonites alliarins (a view to 

 which some conchologists still incline), and recorded it in his 

 edition of ''Turton's Manual of the Land and Freshwater 

 Mollusca of the British Islands, as var. 2, placing Helix glabra 

 Studer in the synonymy. It is hardly likely that so acute a 

 conchologist would be mistaken in its identification, more 

 especially as it has so wide a distribution in this country, and 

 therefore specimens would be not unfrequently met with. I 

 venture to think that Dr. Gray's adoption of the term Zonites 

 alliarius var. glaber Studer, instead of var. 2, would have 

 rendered the oversight less probable. The whole circumstance 

 seems to point to the desirability of applying definite names to 

 the most prominent variations of our different species, in the 

 manner so admirably carried out by Dr. Jeffreys in his classical 

 work, "British Conchology." — J. W. Taylor, June 21st, 1883. 



