WELCH : RARE OR LOCAL IRISH MOLLUSCA. 1 7 



Taking now most of the species which are rare or scarce, some of 

 these have such disconnected records as yet that I cannot well group 

 them as having a northern, southern, eastern, or western distribution. 

 In the following notes, however, I give it as far as our present know- 

 ledge will allow me to do so. 



Taking first those which have a distinctly southern range, the most 

 important is, of course, Geomalacus maculosus Allm., long believed to 

 be confined to a small area at Caragh Lake, north-west Kerry. Dr. 

 Scharff, however, found it much further south in the county at Derry- 

 nane, and also in Co. Cork, at Glengarriff, while in 1898 I sent to one 

 of our meetings in Manchester good specimens collected for many 

 miles along a roadside south of the Kenmare river. The species is 

 undoubtedly plentiful in that district, and it is a most interesting thing 

 to see it all over lichen-covered rock-surfaces on the bare hill-sides in 

 wet or moist warm weather. The district has the maximum rainfall 

 for Ireland and the most equable temperature. The largest and finest 

 specimens I have seen were collected by Arthur W. Stelfox at an 

 altitude of about 1,000 feet, near the tunnel above Glengarriff, where 

 it must undoubtedly have to endure sharp frosts at times. It is a 

 member of the Lusitanian fauna, and has only been found outside 

 Ireland in north-west Portugal and just over the border in Spain. 



The following five species are found only in the extreme south, 

 three of them in one station only and that extremely local. Hyalinia 

 helvetica occurs in two localities in Co. Cork; Helix granulata in two 

 localities in south-west Kerry, and one near Cork ; LimncBa involuta 

 in a mountain tarn above the tunnel, Killarney ; Limncea glabra re- 

 corded many years ago by Thompson^ from near Cork (this it would 

 be well to have verified) ; and Pisidium hibernicuvi, a new species 

 found by our president in a lakelet above Glengarriff. Succinea 

 oblonga, too, has mainly southern stations, six in the counties of Cork 

 and Kerry alone, though by far the strongest settlement of this species 

 is along the shores of one of the northern lakes. Lough Erne, where it 

 lives in profusion for over half-a-mile at least. This station was dis- 

 covered in September, 1900, by some English and Irish members of 

 the Society, who were on a collecting expedition in the lake districts 

 of the north-west. The specimens here are high in the spire, and 

 more Hke those in the Waller collection in the Dublin Museum from 

 Co. Tipperary than the south coast specimens, and Dr. Scharff tells 

 me correspond to the South German S. arenaria. 



Of the western species which have more than two or three stations, 

 Hyalinia excavata is the most interesting. It is more abundant in the 

 south-west than elsewhere, especially in the damp old woods and rocky 

 glens about Upper Killarney, local but moderately plentiful in Clare 



I " Natural History of Ireland," vol. 4, p. 305. 



