46 



THE BRITISH NATURALIST. 



[March 



collected by thousands.'^' I have found the rare rnoulinsiana a few 

 times in this way, and in this way only. There is no other method so 

 good to obtain a knowledge of the inhabitants of a district as a search 

 amongst these deposits. Many living mollusks which have taken 

 refuge here will also be secured. 



Conchologists having beetle-loving friends will do well to take a 

 bottle with them in which to put these insects which abound in such 

 situations, and will doubtless be appreciated by the recipients. 

 T tlx ford. 



Notes. 



Mr. Roebuck has made some interesting remarks on a collection of 

 live slugs which I sent him last summer from Guernsey. He 

 detected all four Arions among them; one adult Avion ater L. had a 

 bright orange fringe and deep yellow foot, while the animal itself v/as 

 drab colour. "This," Mr. Roebuck says, "it is difficult to assign to 

 any named variety, it partakes of more than one, — e.g., it is var. 

 inarginata by the colour of the fringe, added to the body-colour variety 

 for which there seems to be no available name." The varieties vava 

 a.nd phmbea oi Amalia gagates also occurred. 



My attention has been drawn by Mr. J. T. Marshall to the fact 

 that Dr. Jeffreys, subsequent to the publication of his "British 

 Conchology," recognised the Odostomia ventricosa of Forbes as a 

 distinct species in the fReport on the "Lightning" expedition. He 

 had hitherto considered it a variety! of 0. acicula, Phil., from which 

 it is distinguished by more tumid whorls and consequently deeper 

 suture. The sliell is also thinner in texture. The modern process 

 of dismemberment among the genera has severed the group to which 

 these species belong, from Odostomia, under the name of Eulimella. 

 O. scillce, and O. nitidissima are its only British representatives. We 

 note that Canon A. M. Norman puts down O. ventricosa as a distinct 

 species in his printed catalogue. While on this genus, it may be 

 worth recording that Monterosato has recently described the British 

 "0. pusilla'' as a new species (0. iniiovata, Monts.,) on the ground 

 that its sculpture differs from that of the true 0. pusilla, Phil. The 

 difference, whether of specific value or not, seems to consist in a 

 curving of the ribs [costis nrcuatis). 



*1 shall be happy to supply a quantity of such material, from which all the 

 coarser rubbish has been separated, to any reader who will send me a box and return 

 postage. 



f Proc. Zool. Soc, 1884, page 363. 

 J Brit. Conch, Vol. IV., page 172. 



