Field meeting to Box Hill, November 1960

Five members attended the excursion to Box Hill, Surrey. They were ex¬tremely relieved to find that the water level of the River Mole, after the recent flood, was quite low, and none of the areas in which they wanted to collect were under water.

Field collecting was carried out in the following localitiess-

(1) Along the wooded west bank of the River Mole, just to the north of the stepping stones (5l/l74515)* Molluscs were found in areas of leaf litter and ivy which covered the ground.

(2) At the foot of the steep chalk escarpment, where the dense Dogwood scrub changes to grassland, and in a deep crater-like depression (5l/l75516) nearby. In the Dogwood all the snails and slugs were collected from the ground surface, which consisted of a broken layer of chalk chips covered with mosses; adjoining this was an expanse of grassland with a small overgrown ditch, in which Azeca goodalli occurred with other species more characteristic of grassland. At the bottom of the crater there were a large number of logs scattered amongst the leaf litter.

(3) Our final collecting locality was on the downs at the top of the escarp¬ment, just below Salomon's memorial (5l/l78514). Here the majority of specimens were taken at the base of the grass stems and in the moss layer.

The table below records the distribution of the noHuscan species found on this excursions- (see next page)

The important features of this table arc the high relative abundance of species of slugs (20%) and Zonitidae (21%), and the absence of living specimens of the large helicids, which would have been hibernating.