The Oldest Record of a Slug

Abstract

MISS ALICE MACKIE, writing from Egypt, sends me a photograph showing a couple of slugs represented on a wall at Karnak (Fig. 1). These figures are of course well known to Egyptologists, but probably not to malacologists. They appear to represent the species Veronicella nilotica (Cockerell, Nautilus, January 1910, p. 108), which was found by the Nile above Khartoum. In my original account I could only give the coloration as shown by alcoholic material. Mrs. G. B. Longstaff found a specimen among papyrus on the river bank at Hillet al-Nuwer, an islet on the Bahr el-Gebel. She noted that the living animal was very dark grey above, beneath dirty yellow turning to deeper yellow anteriorly.¹ This agrees sufficiently with the Luxor figures, which are shown to be dark above and pale below. As this is the only slug of the kind known from this region, the identity is reasonably certain.