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3. On the habits of Helix lactea. 
By J. S. Gaskoin, F.Z.S. etc. 
As all facts relating to animated nature, elucidating the habits and 
powers of living creatures, however low their station in the scale of 
creation, must be interesting and instructive, I do not hesitate to place 
before the Zoological Society a few observations I have been enabled 
to make on some individuals of the genus Helix. In April 1849, I 
purchased four or five specimens of Helix lactea (African), and placed 
them in water to be cleaned for my cabinet; one, some hour or two 
after immersion, resuscitated, and escaped from the vessel. These 
specimens were selected from a great many others, all of which had 
been together in a dry dusty drawer in the dealer’s shop for more than 
two years, and had been imported by a merchant of Mogadore, in 
whose possession they had remained, in a similar condition, for a still 
longer period. The test of submersion in water was afterwards prac¬ 
tised on the whole stock of the dealer, and none reviving, it was con¬ 
cluded all were dead. I placed the living stranger under a large glass 
bell on a tub of earth, and it lived well on cucumbers and the outside 
leaves of cabbages, &c., quite alone, until the end of the following 
October, when I discovered about thirty minute black helices, not the 
twenty-fifth of an inch in diameter, crawling on the inside of the glass, 
on the mould, &c. At first I had doubts as to their origin, but with 
growth the markings and form of my African captive being approach¬ 
ed, the point was no longer to he mistaken. Some of these are now 
(October 30, 1850) nearly as large as the parent, which measures If 
inch across the long diameter of the aperture, although the lip in no 
instance has begun to evert; thus twelve months have not sufficed to 
attain the adult state. Now as the Helix is known to be bi-sexual, 
and not hermaphrodite, it follows that in this instance impregnation 
or conception must have occurred prior to the capture of the animal, 
after which it fell into a state of suspended animation, and is traced 
to have remained so for more than four years ; and we know nothing 
of the time it may have remained in the hands of the native gatherer 
before he took his collectings to the town dealer for sale; and I see 
no reason why, vitality having been latent for so lengthened a period, 
it might not have continued so almost indefinitely, and on the resto¬ 
ration of animation all the functions of the system resumed at once 
their natural powers: and what is most remarkable, utero-gestation 
resumed its process to accomplish the period, from the time it had 
been arrested, as though no circumstance had suspended the opera¬ 
tion, and the time destined by Nature for its completion. I conclude 
the Helix to be insusceptible of prospective fecundation, that is, one 
communication of the sexes being sufficient for more than one con¬ 
ception, or there would probably before* this time have been another 
brood of young ones, as the parent is still living and flourishing. 
To render this paper more perfect, I will add a few other examples 
relating to the same subject. Dr. Baird has recorded in the ‘Annals 
of Natural History’ for July last, the circumstance of an Egyptian 
Helix, the “ Snail of the Desert,” the Helix maculosa of De Ferussac, 
having remained gummed to a tablet in a show-case of the British 
