LAND SNAILS. 
137 
Some writers have asserted that this species 
has no claim to.rank as indigenous to this coun¬ 
try, but that it was introduced either as an 
article of food, or for medicinal purposes. 
Helix arbustorum (PI. VII., fig. 62), as the 
specific name implies, the “ Shrub Snail,” is a 
tenant of our woods and groves, preferring 
moist situations, but more frequently its habitat 
is among the willows and reeds of our ditch 
sides and river banks. 
The shell of H. arbustorum is certainly hand¬ 
some ; it is globular, about three-fourths of an 
inch in diameter, generally brown, marbled with 
yellowish spots, and having a single blackish 
band winding round the middle of each whorl. 
The animal is covered with tubercles, and is of 
a greenish-black colour, of a light grey beneath 
the foot; the tentacles are short and black, with 
very globular extremities. 
The shell presents numerous variations, both 
in form, and more especially in colour. Some 
are very thin and almost transparent, of a dark 
colour, with or without the band; in others the 
shells are variegated, with a brown band, or 
more strongly marked with a black one ; whilst 
in others the spire is much more prominent. 
The Shrub Snail is distributed over the greater 
part of Europe ; in Great Britain it is somewhat 
localized, though it has a place in most local 
