BEESTON : MOI.I.USCA OF GRANGE-OVER-SANOS. 245 



of confervc'e-covered brick-bats in long matted grass at the Ijottom 

 of a shallow roadside gutter. They were at first taken to be a 

 small dwarfed form of S. putr/s, but when cleaned and examined, 

 they had the distinguishing characteristics of S. oblonga ; and upon 

 being submitted to Mr. C. Oldham, they were pronounced to be 

 that species, and subsequently this was verified by Mr. J. W. Taylor 

 of Leeds. Five shells only were originally found — four alive and 

 one dead. 



Mr. Davy Dean, of Lancaster, had in 1903 found at Hale Moss, 

 near Burton-in-Kendal, five or six miles away, what was at first 

 pronounced to be S. oblonga by Dr. O. Bottger, of Frankfort, to 

 whom they were submitted by Mr. A. S, Kennard, but after much 

 controversy, these are now declared not to be S. oblonga (J. of C, 

 vol. 12, p. i03), so that the Meathop locality is up to the present 

 the only one in this part of the country to produce the true species. 

 A comparison of the Meathop specimens with those from Hale Moss, 

 shows a very striking contrast ; the shells from the latter are larger, 

 thicker and more deeply coloured than those from the former place, 

 and approach the var. ochracea Betta of S. elegans. They appear coarse 

 and clumsy when compared with the true form, which is semi- 

 transparent and delicate in shape and texture. 



Since 1906, parties of conchologists have made excursions to 

 the Meathop locality for the purpose of collecting S. oblonga, and 

 studying its habits ; and the place appears likely to become quite 

 historical — a veritable Mecca of snail hunters (vide Naturalist, 

 May, 1907, p. 173, for particulars of these pilgrimages). 



An extract or two from these articles may not be out of place 

 here, as some members of the Society may not have read them. 



Mr. Jackson writes : — " Our main efforts were devoted to as- 

 certaining the distribution of S. oblonga, taken for the first time in 

 August last year (1906). Our first efforts were, however, disappoint- 

 ing, and we decided to try fresh ground some little distance away 

 from the ditch where Mr. Beeston discovered it. Li this we were 

 more successful, and were soon rewarded by finding a dead adult 

 specimen. This was shortly followed by others, among which were 

 a few full-grown ones. We then became aware that the sides and 

 bottom of the damp ditches in which we were working contained 

 numbers of juvenile examples, all on the crawl, along with a number 



of other species We made our way back to Grange, examining 



other likely habitats for S. oblonga on the way. Near to a triangular 

 piece of brackish water and marshy bit of ground, we were 

 surprised to find the species again in evidence (all young specimens), 

 at the roots of grass on the top of a low wall — a most unusual 



