124 BRITISH MOLLUSKS. 



Sab. Throughout Europe. Rare in Britain. (Under stones in damp 

 shady places on hills.) 



The smallest of our land mollusks, collected only at rare intervals 

 in widely scattered parts of our islands. On the Continent it is 

 more plentiful in the northern and central parts, rare in the south. 

 The animal is described by Moquin-Tandon, as being slightly 

 narrow and rounded in front, very gradually attenuated and some- 

 what blunt behind, finely shagreened greyish-slate colour dotted 

 with black. The shell, like that of V. edentula, is toothless, but 

 very much smaller, and distinctly elevately striated. 



Draparnaud mistook this for the Linnean Turbo muscorum. 



Family III. ATJRICULACEA. 



Respiratory and visceral organs distinct from the main contractile mass 

 of the body, coiled within a spiral shell. Eyes at the base of the 

 tentacles. 



Before passing to the inoperculated Pond Snails (Lymnaacea) 

 which are amphibious, breathing both water and air, we have to 

 speak of a family breathing air, and regarded as land mollusks, but 

 confined to wet places, and in most instances to localities within 

 reach of the sea. Amid the hot swampy and saline marshes of 

 South and Central America, and the islands of Australia and the 

 Malayan and Polynesian archipelagos, are a number of mollusks of 

 this kind, producing shells of comparatively solid growth and dark 

 colour, enveloped, in most instances, by a brown horny epidermis, and 

 having the columella mostly toothed or sculptured with winding 

 plaits. Under the genera Auricula, Scarabus, Melampus, Cono- 

 vulus, Marinula, Pedipes, and Carychium, about a hundred and fifty 

 species have been described. In Britain, the family of Auriculacea 

 is represented by only four species, one belonging to the genus 

 Carychium, and three to Conovulus ; and the family is scarcely 

 more numerous in species in any part of Europe, "Western Asia, 

 or North America. 



Carychium and Conovulus have very different shells, and they 

 differ materially in habit, but the animals are very similar. They 

 agree in the special characteristics, when compared with other air- 

 breathing genera, of having the head produced into a ringed muzzle, 



