82 THE NEXT GENERATION 



Look under the trees as he does ; examine the trunks, the 

 branches, the leaves. You will find snail shells clinging in 

 each place. Notice their variety, their shape, their location. 

 Some are almost an inch long ; others are so small that it 

 takes five to measure one inch. Some are fragile as the frailest 

 china ; others are stout enough to endure rough handling. 



In color they run all the way from bright green and yel- 

 low to the softest shades of brown, with touches of blue and 

 pink and white. Indeed, in coloring, no gems could be more 

 lovely. 



The island of Oahu is forty-six miles long and twenty- 

 five miles wide. A mountain range stretches through it 

 from northwest to southeast. Wooded valleys trail downward 

 from this central mountain range. These valleys are very 

 narrow, very deep, and close together.' Here it was that, in 

 1852, John Gulick gathered his snail shells and found that 

 on Oahu alone there are between two and three hundred 

 species of the same family of snails. 



Some lived on the ground ; some were on the under side 

 of the leaves of low shrubs ; some on the broad branches of 

 the kukui tree. Others lived in sunlight on the ridges be- 

 tween the higher parts of the valleys, while still others always 

 stayed in the damp, shaded forests of the valleys. And the 

 special point to bear in mind is, that from generation to gen- 

 eration each species stayed where it started. It never left 

 its special tree, shrub, or rock unless it was carried away by 

 windstorm or by birds. 



At the very time that John Gulick gathered his shells, he 

 did the one thing which made his whole collection priceless 

 afterwards. He not only found old shells and labeled them, 

 found new shells and gave them names, but he also made 

 careful note of the exact place where each separate shell had 



