specimens: "The range of variation is so great among the Foraminifera as to include not merely those differential characters which have been usually accounted specific, but also those upon which the greater part of the genera, of this group have been founded, and even in some instances those of its orders."[1]
Coming now to a higher group—the Sea-Anemones—Mr. P. H. Gosse and other writers on these creatures often refer to variations in size, in the thickness and length of the tentacles, the form of the disc and of the mouth, and the character of surface of the column, while the colour varies enormously in a great number of the species. Similar variations occur in all the various groups of marine invertebrata, and in the great sub-kingdom of the mollusca they are especially numerous. Thus, Dr. S. P. Woodward states that many present a most perplexing amount of variation, resulting (as he supposes) from supply of food, variety of depth and of saltness of the water; but we know that many variations are quite independent of such causes, and we will now consider a few cases among the land-mollusca in which they have been more carefully studied.
In the small forest region of Oahu, one of the Sandwich Islands, there have been found about 175 species of land-shells represented by 700 or 800 varieties; and we are told by the Rev. J. T. Gulick, who studied them carefully, that "we frequently find a genus represented in several successive valleys by allied species, sometimes feeding on the same, sometimes on different plants. In every such case the valleys that are nearest to each other furnish the most nearly allied forms; and a full set of the varieties of each species presents a minute gradation of forms between the more divergent types found in the more widely separated localities."
In most land-shells there is a considerable amount of variation in colour, markings, size, form, and texture or striation of the surface, even in specimens collected in the same locality. Thus, a French author has enumerated no less than 198 varieties of the common wood-snail (Helix nemoralis), while of the equally common garden-snail (Helix hortensis) ninety varieties have been described. Fresh-water shells are also
- ↑ Foraminifera, preface, p. x.
