April, 1890.] THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



61 



BORDER SKETCHES. 

 By the Rev. HILDERIC FRIEND, F.L.S. 



Notes on the Conchology of Cumberland, I. 



The shells of this border county seem to have received but scanty 

 attention at the hands of collectors and recorders. In a Census of the 

 distribution of Land and Fresh-water Mollusca, compiled and publish- 

 ed last year by Messrs. Taylor and Roebuck (Land and Fresh-water 

 Shells — The Young Collector Series, Messrs. Sonnenschein and Co., 

 1889), I find that out of 131 species enumerated, only 17 had been au- 

 thenticated by the Referees of the Conchological Society as belonging 

 to Cumberland. We know that 75 species (or thereabouts) occur 

 within the county, but the great majority have never, till this year, 

 passed through the hands of the recognized authorities for identification 

 and record. The same applies, perhaps to a larger extent, in the mat- 

 ter of marine shells, and it is to supply our lack of knowledge, and 

 stimulate to further research that these notes are put together. As I 

 have so far failed to find a single reference to the marine Conchology of 

 Cumberland, I will in the first place state what I know of the subject 

 at present ; and then come to the study of other forms. 



I.— MARINE SHELLS. 



I made the following note on this subject in Science Gossip, vol. xxv. 

 (1889), p. 126, in an article relating to the objects of interest at Silloth 

 on the Solway. "The conchologist will be sorely disappointed if he 

 hopes to make a collection of shells during his stay here— either of land 

 or marine species. 1 have seen an occasional dead shell of Helix 

 nemoralis, L. with H. caperata, Mont., and even now (April) a slug or 

 two may be seen on the move, while the pools a little inland will yield 

 some species of Planorbis and a tew other common forms, but on the 

 coast the work is very unattractive. The little Rissoas, Hydrobias, 

 and other molluscs found so plentifully at Cleethorpes, Cardross, or 

 elsewhere, are apparently unknown ; as are also the larger forms of 

 Venus, Mya, Scrobicularia, Nassa, Natica, Aporrhais, Solen, and 

 others. When you have written Mussel, Cockle, Tellina, Periwinkle, 



