92 On the Land and Fresh-water Shells of Wilts. 



no harm in it, especially if the name of the counties to which 

 allusion is made be suppressed. One adjoining us, certainly can 

 lay claim to a few names, one especially who has been most deeply 

 interested in the subject, and whose museum certainly bears marks 

 of very earnest and constant toil, but if we go beyond there and 

 examine the museum of another city which has for years been 

 collecting together interesting specimens, there is not a member of 

 any Natural History Club in the County whose name appears as a 

 contributor: moreover having been privileged by invitation to make 

 an excursion on a field day with numbers of members of the 

 Society existing in the Cathedral City, which too received members 

 by way of deputation from other Natural History Societies, not 

 one present knew anything about Conchology as a science, nor did 

 they know anyone belonging to them who did. Wilts is not so 

 bad as that ; in her Cathedral City a collection of Terrestial and 

 Fluviatile Shells is progressing, and within sound of her Cathedral 

 bells there are four friends known to me by correspondence who 

 are much interested in shells, to say nothing of Mr. (and I believe 

 I may say Miss) Cunnington here, as well as others favorable to the 

 study resident in different localities. 



This then brings us into direct contact with Wilts. Adopting 

 at once the classification of Mr. Reeve as published in his recent 

 work, and examining the slugs, we meet with the four genera — 

 Arion, Oeomalacus, Limax, Testacella — embracing under them 

 thirteen species in all. One of these the Geomalacus Maculosus is 

 strictly Irish, and very local there, so that we have but to consider 

 twelve as belonging to England ; five only as yet have been placed 

 upon the Wiltshire list, but there is I find rather a carelessness 

 about paying attention to slugs : when lists of shells are sent for 

 comparison or exchange of specimens, the slugs are scarcely ever 

 found in duplicate, and very frequently not recorded at all, but 

 there certainly must be more than five slugs in this county. 



We pass now to the Colimacea, which owns twelve genera, em- 

 bracing sixty species : in this county our combined researches have 

 been instrumental in discovering forty-five of the whole number ; 

 but out of the deficiency some such as Succinea oblonga, Bulimus 



