At 06:30 AM 6/13/99 -0700, you wrote:
>NOW that James' slug has been identified, perhaps you can put a name to
>my "Railtroad Snails". The snail is about almost two inches long,
>colored a gray tinged with yellow. The shells are variable. They run
>from yellow, through brown and various degrees of red. There is always a
>dark brown or several dark brown lines of various widths circular in the
>direction the shell is growing. There are multitudinous microscopic
>spiral lines but that cut through the angular colors.
>        I call them "Railroad Snails" because the only ones I have found seem
>to occur within 100 yards of a working or abandoned railroad. My
>assumption would be that the snails may not be native to Ohio but have
>been brought in with grain shipments at some time in the past. Dead
>shells occur after a late fall frost. The live ones come out after a
>rain like yesterday.
>        Art
>

Art:

These are probably Cepaea nemoralis. It is a European introduction that
occurs is several widely separated colonies. The colony in Cincinnati is
well-known and apparently broken up - it's been there for years. I found
several shells in drift near the mouth of the Great Miami down there, but
couldn't find where they washed down from. Another population occurs on
Kellys Island in Lake Erie off the Bass Islands. Just north of that is
another along the Sydenham River in Ontario.

I would love to get ahold of some live ones for my terrarium - I have
several species of Mesodons and Neohelix breeding there now. Keep me in mind?



*****************************************
 G Thomas Watters
 Ohio Biological Survey &
 Aquatic Ecology Laboratory
 Ohio State University
 1315 Kinnear Road
 Columbus, OH 43212 USA
 v: 614-292-6170  f: 614-292-0181
******************************************

"The world is my oyster except for months with an 'R' in them" - Firesign
Theater

"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he
has to buy a license" - GTW