274 



OLDHAM : FRESHWATER SHELLS EATEN BY RATS. 



of Yorkshire. I afterwards went about fifty yards up the Anston 

 Road; close to the station, to the left of the road, and at the depth of 

 nearly two feet, I found a living specimen of Achatina, shell hyaline 

 and pellucid, animal soft and delicate, pulpy, yellowish, but I have 

 failed to resuscitate it. It was close by the pathway, and doubtless 

 there are countless millions all over that district, as there are at this 

 place. They only require looking for. To what end do they exist 

 in such numbers ? Cut bono ? What do they feed upon, how spend 

 their existence, for what object, why were they made ? All such 

 questions are difficult to answer. We have only one Achatina^ one 

 Carychium, one Acme, one Cydostoma, one Neritiiia, all of them 

 exquisite in form, and always worth looking for amongst the other 

 better known shells. 1 never saw an abnormal specimen of Achatiiia in 

 this country, and I am not aware that any varieties have been noticed. 



Since our Kiveton Park excursion I haye been ' reminded that 

 Mr. Wilcock finds Achatina numerously at Newton near Wakefield, 

 and Mr. W. Nelson has taken it alive at Pontefract, and dead at 

 Wentbridge. 



The Duke of Argyle in a recent article on ' What is Science ' ? 

 appropriately remarks : — ' The minutest living thing is more 

 wonderful than the starry heavens. The minutest creature endowed 

 with life is an organisation more wonderful, more intricate, more 

 impossible for us fully to understand than the whole mechanism 

 of the heavens.' If that be so, certainly great interest is attached to 

 the life history and distribution of the shell we have been describing. 



[It will be of interest to add to Mr. Emmet's observations, 

 that Mr. E. ColUer has informed us that he has taken living speci- 

 miens in Miller's Dale, Derbyshire. He says that the best way to 

 find the living shells at that place is to turn over the large stones in 

 the loose friable earth near the riverside ; by doing this he generally 

 found a few live shells, adhering to the under side of the stones, quite 

 out of the light and heat; this was in summer. — W.D.R.] 



CONCHOLOGICAL NOTE. 

 Freshwater Shells Eaten by Rats. — A somewhat similar incident to 



that quoted by Mr. C. T, Musson, in the Naturalist for March, has recently come 

 under my notice. Instead of IMussels, however, the species in this case were 

 Pahidina coiitecta and Pla7ioThis comeiis. Both of these species occur in moderate- 

 plenty in a small pond in Birch (a suburb of Manchester). Several small heaps, 

 each comprising two or three dozen empty shells, were lying about on the margin 

 of the pond. In the Paludinae a large hole had been bitten o^ut of the lowest 

 whorl; whilst in the other species, the centre whorls had been entirely bitten away, 

 in order to reach the morsel within. In the banks of the pond were several rat 

 holes, belonging presumably to the Brown Rat {Mus decumamis), for I hardly 

 think that Water Voles would be guilty of the mischief.— Chas. Oldham, Broad 

 Road, Sale, May 15th, 1885. 



