120 VARIATION, DISTRIBUTION, AND EVOLUTION OF THE GENUS PARTULA. 
simple, outwardly covering an umbilicus resembling that of Bulimus australis. The whole 
shell is brown outside, or the color of roasted coffee; the lips are whitish and the cavity 
sooty. It is not common.” 
This account is erroneous in the matter of the fluviatile habit of the snail; 
the error may be due to the discovery of dead shells only in the bed of Fautaua 
stream, into which they had been washed by the rains, and to the failure of the 
earliest collectors to find living examples on the vegetation. This conjecture is 
rendered even more probable by the final comment to the effect that is is not 
common. In my own experience the species is at least as abundant here as in any 
other part of Tahiti. 
In Garrett’s notable monograph the description of the whole species begins 
with the Fautaua shells, in explicit recognition of their generalized and basic nature. 
Garrett says (pp. 47, 48): 
“The metropolis of the typical otaheitana is about 2 miles up Fautaua! Valley, on the 
northward part of Tahiti, where it is very abundant on the trunks and foliage of trees and 
bushes. The above-mentioned valley being close to the principal harbor which was fre- 
quented by the earlier navigators, it is undoubtedly where Bruguiére’s type was obtained. 
“The Fautaua shells, which are very variable in size, shape, and color, are never orna- 
mented by spiral bands, and about one-third of the specimens are sinistral. The parietal tooth 
is nearly always present in the adults, and the peristome, though usually white, is frequently 
pinky-flesh color. The prevailing colors are straw yellow, reddish fulvous, light chestnut 
frequently with the spire more or less tinted with reddish and often with longitudinal 
strigations. ‘The spire is more or less produced, and the aperture varies some in size and 
shape. [Italics mine.] 
“The shape of the shell varies from abbreviate-ovate to elongate-ovate, as the following 
measurements will show: 
“Length 21, diameter 10 mm. _ Dextral specimen. 
Length 16, diameter 10 mm. Dextral specimen. 
Length 20, diameter 10 mm. _ Sinistral specimen. 
Length 16, diameter 9 mm. Sinistral specimen.” 
The specimens of the present research comprise several beautifully banded 
shells which seem to be newcomers in this valley since Garrett’s time. Again, in 
my own series 40 per cent are dextral, not two-thirds as Garrett states for the earlier 
period. The significance of this discrepancy will be discussed beyond, when Mayer’s 
figures will also be taken into account; but even at the outset it appears that a 
distinct change in the colony as a whole has been brought about in recent decades. 
FAUTAUA VALLEY AND THE AREA OF COLLECTION. 
The valley of Fautaua is justly famed on account of its wonderful beauty. It 
is one of the largest in all Tahiti, being equaled by few and exceeded greatly by 
Papenoo only because the latter forms the major outlet from the ancient central 
crater of the whole island massif (cf. plates 9, 10, and 11). At its mouth it is fully 
three-quarters of a mile in width, but at a radial distance of a mile or so from the 
shore its sides draw together and rise more abruptly. Naturally the vegetation 
1In Garrett’s monograph, this name is consistently misspelled ‘‘ Fautana,’’—an error that should not be perpetuated 
even in quotation. 
