i6 THE BRITISH NATURALIST. [January 



MoUusca. 



NOTES ON HELIX NEMORALIS AND 



H. HORTENSIS. 



By The Rev. J. W. HORSLEY, M.A. 



1. I have a strong opinion tiiat nemoralis and hortensis are quite 

 distinct species, though related. Certain things would incline me to 

 believe that the former is an improvement on the latter, rather than the 

 latter a degraded form of the former. Hortensis seems to me to become 

 occasionally like to nemoralis, but I do not notice the reverse. I have 

 never seen the two species coupling, and should call var. hybrida rather 

 var. fiiscolabiata of hortensis. I rarely find the two species in the same 

 hedge, or even district, though in a few places I have found them 

 plentiful and inextricably mixed. Round Dover, for example, nemoralis 

 is very plentiful and very varying, but I cannot find a single hortensis 

 nearer than close to Folkestone, where, in one or two hedges, the two 

 are mixed. So here not a nemoralis is found on the tertiary soils, though 

 Jiortejisis (and notably the vars. lilacina, albida, and lutea J abounds ; 

 but directly you touch the chalk, even where it is not actually at the 

 surface, nemoralis appears. It is curious that in Plumstead Marshes, 

 which are purely alluvial, both species are found plentifully, but never 

 mixed, although only a couple of fields may separate them. 



2. The nomenclature annoys me, especially when I have to inter- 

 pret it to beginners and those ignorant of what passes for Latin 

 amongst Conchologists. If you translate hortensis for their benefit, 

 they are perplexed as to why aspersa is not so named. I have seen 

 hortensis in a garden certainly, but not often. When is nemoralis a 

 woodland shell ? I have nowhere found it more plentiful than on 

 sand dunes by the sea, and should never search a wood when I had a 

 hedge to investigate for this shell. Then again, as the shells are so 

 cognate, and their varieties also, why should not the bandless yellow 

 varieties of both be lutea ? What wiseacre named the yellow 

 nemoralis, lihelUda ? What resemblance to a dragon-fly did he 

 discern ? Again, why should the transparently-banded nemoralis be 

 Jiyalozonata, and the similar variety of hortensis be arenicola ? Why 

 not both hyalozonata ? And why arenicola ? I have never found it on 

 sand hills, nor indeed any hortensis at all, though, as I have said, 



