41 
represents her in body-armonr—the most archaic statuary agrees 
with Phidias in this particular, in dressing her figure in the 
long closely-pleated peplos, with no other defence than the 
helmet on her head and the shield held forth on her arm, and, 
more rarely, the cpgis round her neck, which she borrows from 
her father. Such is her regular equipment in Roman art, from 
the early times of the Republic when her helmeted head, with 
title Roma is the usual obverse of the coinage, down to the 
fifth century, when as a neutral party between Paganism and 
Christianity, she is allowed in the inoffensive character of 
Urbs Roma to retake her place upon the denarii. 
The only result of this long discussion is the conviction that, 
although it is very easy to discover what the meaning of the 
sculpture is not, it is impossible to decide what it is, and the 
reader of the foregoing discussion will have good reason to 
quote the reply of Plautus, “ Bene repUcasU, incertior niulto 
sum quam cludumB 
November 7th. —The Rev. W. C. Hey, M.A., read a paper 
on “ Some Facts and Theories about our Banded Snails.” 
The last paper I had the honour of reading before this 
Society dealt with the common bivalves of our York rivers. 
The present paper has for its subject some of the familiar 
univalves of our hedgerows, commonly denominated snails. 
The remarks I have to put before you refer to those brightly- 
coloured shells which appear in such astonishing numbers, 
sticking to nettles or crawling over grass, when the weather is 
warm and damp, and vanish in an equally astonishing manner 
when we have a succession of very sunny or very cold days. 
The variation in colour of these shells is almost endless. I have 
gathered in Yorkshire alone about thirty very distinctly marked 
varieties, and an immense number of less clearly distinguished 
forms. Yellow or pink is usually the ground colour—some¬ 
times left plain, sometimes decorated with one, rarely with two, 
often with three or more dark narrow bands. At other times 
one broad band runs all round. Occasionally the bands are 
variously interrupted, and specimens at times occur which have 
the bands bright red, or quite colourless. An interesting 
