348 
MOLLUSCS. 
itself. About a thousand species have been described. They are most numerous 
in Europe and Eastern Asia, only a very few species being known from South 
America. Achatina is one of those genera the scope of which has been greatly 
altered since it was first founded by Lamarck. In those days any land-shell with 
a notch or truncation in the pillar-lip of the aperture was considered an Achatina. 
It is, however, now reserved for a group of large snails which are only met with 
in Africa, Madagascar, and a few other adjacent islands. They have fine handsome 
shells, vividly painted with more or less wavy stripes, and covered with a thin 
periostracum. A. variegata, in the tropical forests of West Africa, is sometimes 
7 h inches in length, and the largest of all the living land-shells. 
The members of the extensive family Achatinellidce are inhabitants of the 
Sandwich Islands, and occur in no other part of the globe; the species being all 
small, and many of them both dextral and sinistra!. Some are found on trees 
agate-sxail (Achatina fulica). 
and shrubs, whilst others are always met with on the ground. Mr. Barnacle has 
given an interesting account of the production of musical sounds by these little 
land-snails. He described the sound as resembling that of hundreds of iEolian 
harps, and believed it was produced by the friction of the shells against the bark 
of the trees upon which the snails were crawling. 
The amber - snails ( Succineidce) bear a strong family likeness to one 
another. The shells are all very fragile, oblong, yellowish, or reddish, with a more 
or less exserted spire and a very large body-whorl. They are found in damp 
situations, and have even been observed crawling beneath the water, upon which 
they can float in a reversed position. They are vegetarian in their diet, and 
deposit their eggs on the stems and leaves of aquatic plants, and also upon stones 
or other substances near the water’s edge. Species of Succinea occur in most 
parts of the world, being met with in such remote localities as Greenland, 
Patagonia, India, Japan, Australia, and the South Sea Islands. The species 
