78 BRITISH MOLLUSKS. 



16. Helix revelata. Discovered Helix. 



Shell ; minutely umbilieated, subglobose, very thin, membranaceous, 

 greenish umber, spire convex, whorls four, im- 

 pressed at the suture, then rounded, obliquely 

 plicately •wrinkled in a crimped manner, hairy, the 

 hairs being comparatively distant, short and rather 

 rigid ; aperture lunar- circular, lip thin, scarcely 

 reflected, basal margin a little dilated round the 

 umbibcus. 



Helix revelata, Ferussac (1821), Tab. Si/st. p. 44. no. 273. 



Helicella revelata, Beck (1837), Ind. Moll. p. 7. 



Helix subviriclis, Bellamy (1841), Brit. Assoc. Hep. 



Hab. France. Channel Islands. South-west of England. (Among grass 

 and at the roots of shrubs.) 



A delicate greenish-umber membranaceous shell, having some- 

 what the appearance of a globose exotic Vitrina. It is, however, 

 obliquely plicately wrinkled in a crimped manner, and beset through- 

 out with fine rather distant bristly hairs, erectly rooted in the 

 epidermis, as in H. sericea. The Hp is scarcely reflected except at 

 its junction with the body-whorl, where it is a little dilated round 

 the small umbilicus. H. revelata was not observed in Britain until 

 several years after its discovery in France, and EngHsh concholo- 

 gists hesitated to regard it as anything more than the young of 

 H. sericea. It was detected first in Britain in Guernsey, by Pro- 

 fessor Forbes, then in Cornwall by Mr. A. E. Benson, son of the 

 well-known Indian conchologist, and it has been since collected in 

 Devonshire and in the Scilly Isles. Mr. Jeffreys, says that " in 

 winter and dry weather, it buries itself rather deep in the earth, 

 and must be looked for by pulling up tufts of grass and large stones 

 which are sunk in the ground, as well as by searching among the 

 roots and furze-bushes." 



Dupuy, Moquin-Tandon, and Jeffreys have referred to H. reve- 

 lata the H. occidentalis, Recluz {H. Ponentina, Morelet), which 

 is quite another species, a firm opake shell with a broadly reflected 

 lip admirably figured by Morelet (Moll, du Port. pi. vi. f. 4), and 

 of which there are well authenticated specimens named by Pfeiffer, 

 in the collection of Mr. Cuming. Mr. Jeffreys' description of the 

 animal of H. revelata, which partakes very much of the details of 

 Moquin-Tan don's description of H. occidentalis, must be received 

 with caution. 



