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CERTAIN TERRESTRIAL TESTACEOUS MOLLUSCA 

 FROM SOUTH-WESTERN EUROPE. 



By Surgeon K. HURLSTONE JONES, M.B., R.N., F.L.S. 



(Read before the Society, June 13th, 1900). 



The Channel Squadron, in which I have recently had the honour of 

 serving, usually makes two cruises a year to the south-west of Europe 

 — one in the spring, and the other in the autumn months ; and it has 

 been during these cruises that the following notes and observations 

 have been made. 



The Iberian Peninsula is the part of south-western Europe which 

 the Channel Squadron mainly visits, and Gibraltar is naturally its head- 

 quarters when cruising in those parts, so that it is not remarkable that 

 most of my notes refer to that foi tress. Other places at which I have 

 had the good fortune to take conchological notes are Arosa Bay, in the 

 north-west of Spain, and Algerciras in the south, on the opposite side 

 of the bay to Gibraltar, Lisbon, Cintra, and Sardinia. 



Arosa Bay is a magnificent natural harbour, the shores of which 

 teem with the littoral marine mollusca of the north temperate Atlantic 

 — Bticcini/m, Purpura, Trocluis, Patella, etc., but it is not proposed to 

 deal with these here. The geological formation is all old red sandstone, 

 and the soil metamorphic and very rich. The sandstone occurs in the 

 shape of great rounded boulders on the slopes of the hills, and as 

 rocky islets in the bay, whilst the apex of nearly every small elevation 

 is a quaintly-shaped pile of the same rock. The country is thickly 

 populated, the people being evenly scattered over its surface, or con- 

 gregated in very small villages, and the ground is widely cultivated in 

 a rather slip-shod manner. 



At Gibraltar the formation is limestone, and the same holds good 

 for the hills at Aranci Bay and Cagliari, the two places at which I 

 have collected in Sardinia. The country around Gibraltar is rich but 

 very barren, scantily populated, and to a great extent uncultivated, 

 as is also the case at Aranci Bay, whilst at Cagliari I spent so short 

 a time that I could make no observations worth recording as to the 

 country in general. 



At Arosa Bay, where vegetation is luxuriant and plentiful, and lime- 

 stone the geological formation, a condition was produced, which I have 

 noticed also in a less marked degree under similar circumstances else- 

 where, namely, that whilst the soft parts of the terrestrial mollusca 

 were large and well developed, the shells on the contrary, though of 

 necessity large in order to cover the soft parts, were of extreme thin- 

 ness, so much so that, like those of Helix fusca, they required the 



