Just where the faded tail of an eccentric
peacock on the paper of his sitting-room,
lost itself in the faint pink of a true lover's
knot, forming an introductory flourish to the
stem of a large white oak leaf with a pale
blue acorn, Mr. Slitherhouse began to
distinguish the southern part of Europe (famous
chiefly for its snails), running down to the
Mediterranean and extending to the Black
Sea, and thence advancing to the Caucasian
variety of the Bulimi. Having gratified the
first gush of his roving imagination thus far,
Mr. Slitherhouse bethought him that it would
be better to methodise his excursions a little,
and in accordance with the map he had seen
in the pamphlet. Still keeping his eyes fixed
upon the paper of his room, he made a dash
through nine peacocks' tails, with their
associated true lovers' knots and white oak
leaves, and alighted at once upon a spot which
corresponded with his ideas of the Brazilian
and other snail-provinces of South America,
recollecting that Mr. Reeve had distinctly
stated that this hemisphere comprised the
"four grand provinces of their distribution."
He there saw in imagination (or to speak more
correctly, in memory, for he had just been
looking at the coloured fac-similes), amidst
the luxuriant wilds of Venezuela and New
Granada, " the highest condition of the genus."
Here the warm temperature and the vegetation,
watered by the tributaries of the Magdalena
and the Orinoco rivers, are most
favourable to the development of these
interesting creatures, so that sixty different
species may be collected at different altitudes.
On the sides of the mountains sloping from
the sea, where there is little vegetation, Mr.
Slitherhouse saw but a few species, and of
these the shell was extremely poor; thin in
substance and dull of hue, owing to the want
of sufficient moisture in the animals. Their
bodies, however, were curiously spotted and
painted, and they clung in bunches, one over
the other, to many a splendidly-flowering
cactus, eating into the very middle of the
leaves and stem, notwithstanding the thorns,
prickles, and frizzy hairs that protected the
food. How so soft a substance as the head
and neck of a snail could contrive to escape
without wounds in so dangerous a feeding-
place, was a question of much admiring
speculation in the mind of our naturalist.
But what a difference between the dull
colour of these snail-shells, and those of some
other parts of the world, where they were so
brilliant, transparent, and variegated. These
differences were discoverable, to a great
extent, between the shells of the same
provinces at different elevations, according to the
temperature, and to the character of the
vegetation. Journeying up the mountains of
Venezuela, for instance, they are large and
sombre in some parts, bright and small in
others; proceeding higher still, the plants
become thicker, and gradually give place to
forests with undergrowth of broad green
leaves, the whole space being enveloped in
clouds and mists. Mr. Slitherhouse perceived
at once, that although this was no place to
read " Thomson's Seasons " in, it was a very
beautiful locality for snails. Here, at an
elevation of from four thousand to six thousand
feet, he remembered to have seen (in Plate
twenty-four of the quarto) the richly coloured
Bulimi fulminans, and Blainvilleanus; the
former, oblong, acuminated towards the apex,
having five whorls (curls), with a lip " widely
reflected," its colour a peculiar semi-
transparent smoky brown, shot with sharp angular
zigzags of bright chestnut; the latter creature
similar in architecture and tone of colour to
the fulminans, but over-laid with a remarkable
epidermis of a dark green hue, sometimes,
in highly favoured individuals, dotted with
yellow spots, deposited in fine rippling
wrinkles, resembling those which we often see
on oil paintings that have been too much
exposed to the heat of the sun. Clambering
higher still up these mountains, in fact, to an
elevation of eight thousand feet, our naturalist
had no doubt but the temperature which he
should feel would be considerably lowered;
for there, beneath decayed leaves of dense
woods, or in cold shadowy ravines and clefts
of rocks, were the huge widely-inflated, thick-
shelled " vehicles " of several very
imposing creatures, and more especially of the
darkly painted Moritzianas,—brown, streaked
with yellowish white, in a wavy pattern,
covered with an olive green epidermis, and
having a broad lip of deep orange.

Here the memory of Mr. Slitherhouse,
excited as it had been, quite failed him, and
he was obliged to withdraw his eyes from the
geographical wall of his apartment, and turn
to Mr. Reeve's map, pamphlet, and the Plates
of the quarto.

He found that the great Snail families were
distributed over the equatorial, tropical, and
temperate regions of the globe, in tribes, each
of a distinct character, and not at all disposed
to change their special localities. " Being of
sluggish habits," says the pamphlet, "with
few means of transport " (none, we should
fancy, beyond their own slow coaches), " little
migration occurs, even where there are no
such natural boundaries as seas, deserts, or
mountain-chains." The localities of nearly
six hundred different species, distributed over
the world, are now well authenticated. Our
enthusiastic naturalist, having hastily
examined the Venezuelan and Brazilian provinces,
turned his gaze to the sandy plains of
Chili, where there is little moisture, except
that which is derived from the dews. The
shells here were generally small, thin, and not
very admirable in colour or marking. Near
the sea-shore, they were darkly speckled, and
existed in a torpid state for many months in
the crevices of rocks. In the warmer district of
Peru, however, they were more bright of colour,
and possessed more variety in their patterns.
Still, Mr. Slitherhouse found there was