LIMAX. 



19 



2. Limax gagates. Agate Limax. 



Animal ; body oblong, tapering towards the tail, conspicuously keeled 

 throughout the back, dull grey, becoming colourless towards 

 the margin, radiately furrowed with anastomosing veins, head 

 and tentacles grey ; shield oblong, continuously ridged, trun- 

 cated, granulated, dark, respiratory orifice sub-central. 

 Shell ; oval, small, thick, irregularly convex. 

 Limax g agates, Draparnaud (1801), Tabl. Moll. p. 100. Hist. Moll. pi. 9. 



f. 1, 2. 

 Milax g agates, Gray (1855), Cat. Brit. Mus. p. 174. 

 Limax (Amalia) gagates, Moquin-Tandon (1855), Hist. Moll. vol. ii. p. 19. 



pi. 2, f. 1 to 3. 

 Hob. Central, Southern, and Western Europe, Madeira, Ireland, Isle of 

 Man, Portland Island, Isle of Wight, Torquay, Guernsey, Scotland, (by 

 the road-side or at the base of old walls). 

 The Agate Limax, so named by Draparnaud from its dark agate- 

 like shield, has been long known on the Continent, but in Britain, 

 excepting a single record of its discovery lately in Scotland, it has 

 only been observed in Ireland, in the Isle of Man, and in the few 

 southern English localities recorded above. Dr. Gray remarks in 

 the late edition of his Manual that L. gagates is very likely only a 

 variety of L. Soioerbyi, but the characters by which it is distin- 

 guished from that species are by no means unimportant. The body, 

 though as conspicuously keeled, is more slender and tapering towards 

 the tail, and the integuments instead of being linearly grooved are 

 smooth and rayed at the sides with linear veins. The shield is more 

 ovate and continuously ridged, while the respiratory orifice is nearer 

 the centre. In colour the body is of a dingy leaden hue, fading almost 

 to white at the margins, and often speckled, and the shield is darker 

 still. 



c2 



