EMMET: ACHATINA ACICULA IN YORKSHIRE. 27 1 



I believe I was the first to find it in this magnesian limestone 

 district — in July, 1858. I searched for it for years before I found it. 

 I had been going the wrong way about it. I had looked amongst 

 the debi'is at the foot of limestone crags, instead of at the top, and in 

 stone coffins of the Saxon period, according to Dr. J. E. Gray's 

 formula. Dr. Gray says: — 'It is very common six or eight inches 

 deep in the ground in Yorkshire, on the tops of gravel pits, and in 

 Saxon coffins.' I examined every Saxon and Roman coffin in York, 

 and other places, with no results. The first specimen I captured was 

 in the course of a desultory walk between CUffbrd and Bramham 

 village, by the road side, where the marl had been cut through in 

 making the road, and was therefore exposed and weathered. I dug 

 into the marl on the top of the rock, and in two minutes found my 

 favourite shell, very much to my astonishment. The specimens I took 

 were dead ones ; and I have seen no living ones in thirty years, 

 although I have taken scores of dead ones and have no doubt that 

 live ones are to be found. All that I have seen look much like sub- 

 fossils, except an occasional transparent and pellucid one here and 

 there, but without animal inside it. Having discovered the Chfford 

 shells, I reasoned inductively that the species would be found under 

 similar conditions all over the limestone tract. I examined five 

 different places or districts, with the same rock, subsoil and marl, and 

 vegetable growth, at distances about a mile apart from each other. 

 As I supposed I should do, I took numerous specimens at each of 

 these five points of observation, and I came to the conclusion that 

 A. aciaila, instead of being one of the rarest, is absolutely the com- 

 monest shell in the district, more abundant than Helix riifesceiis^ 

 H. nemoralis^ or H, hortensis\ the only competitor as regards numbers 

 being the pest of our gardens, Limax agrestis. 



Take the magnesian limestone terrace from north to south, and 

 across, as the hunting ground, and reckoning that twenty or thirty 

 specimens may be found in a few square yards, the numbers of 

 A. acicula must be almost fabulous, to be counted not by scores or 

 hundreds, but by miUions and bilhons, enough to stock every con- 

 •chological cabinet in the universe ; and this without moving an inch 

 beyond the very limited limestone terrace above named. My old 

 friend Dr. Evans and myself visited a wood near this place some 

 twenty years ago, and I took so many specimens that he could not 

 believe but that I had them already in a pill-box brought from m.y 

 cabinet. However, he began to find them as I did, and I think we 

 took about forty in perhaps an hour's time ; some of them are now 

 before me, mostly opaque, with a few beautiful glassy shells inter- 

 spersed. 



July 1885. 



