At a time when everybody is concerned only with international politics and whether or not the world is going to be plunged into another war it may seem a bit trivial to write about snails. Yet that is precisely what I propose to do, since they form a subject upon which I have scarcely touched in these Nature Notes. In an English garden snails are so plentiful that it would be impossible not to notice them, but here in Shanghai just the reverse is the case. These terrestrial malluses are so few in this part of China that they are a positive rarity in most Shanghai gardens, and to find them one must go on a regular hunt, looking in crannies in rockeries or low down amongst the stems of plants. It is only in the middle of summer that one may expect to find them crawling about and feeding upon the leaves of plants, and then only in really damp weather and usually at night. Seldom do they show themselves during the day. I am using the word "they," but actually I am referring to a single species of land snail This is what may be called the Chinese garden snail for want of a better popular name, and it is known to science as Eulota ravida, Benson, Shaped like the common garden snail of England, it has a much thinner shell of a horny-yellowish colour. In Shanghai gardens it seldom reaches anything approaching the size of the English garden snail, but at places like Chapoo I have found specimens on the old city wall, where they are plentiful, fully as large. With the exception of the tiny amber snail this is the only land snail I have found in any garden in Shanghai, but in the neighbouring country I have found a species of. door-shell of the genus Clausilia, which appears to be fairly common, while in the Nanking area some years ago I discovered half-a-dozen or so different kinds of land snails representing as many genera. The door-shell is a small species with a long slender spire. Its shell may be described as spindle-shaped. I once found this species in considerable numbers in tufts of stonecrop (Sedum) growing between the cracks of the stones of one of the bridges at, Bingwoo on the way to Chapoo. There is one other land snail found in Shanghai gardens, where it is really very common, but is so small as to escape one's notice unless one is definitely looking for it. This is the little amber snail (Succinea indica Pfeiffer), referred to above, which does not exceed a quarter of an inch in total length, and is to be looked for on small plants growing near the ground, such as the little blue spider-wort or day flower, or, with more certainty of finding it. amongst potted plants. It is shaped very much like the well known pond snails (Limnaea), having the first whorl of its shell large, with a very small spire. It differs from the pond snails, however, in that it has tentacles like other land snails with knobs at the end in which the eyes are situated, instead of at the bases of pointed tentacles as in the pond snails and other aquatic forms. This amber snail is distributed all over Eastern and Southern Asia. The other snail found in Shanghai gardens, Eulota ravida, is also distributed all over China, ranging as-far north as Pei-tai-ho, the well known summer resort in North-eastern China, where I have collected specimens.—A, DE c. s.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.