MOLLUSKS 313 



in excess of anything to be found upon our shores. The 

 veritable paradise of the naturalist is the East Indies. There 

 the "aristocratic" genera, so called on account of their mar- 

 velous beauty, occur in their highest development Voluta, 

 Mitra, Oliva, Conns, and the various murices. There also are to 

 be found the pearl-oysters, Meleagrina margaritifera, that yield 

 their valuable harvest, and the giant clam, Tridacna gigas, which 

 measures sometimes five feet in length. Over eight thousand 

 species of mollusks are described from this surpassingly rich 

 region, yet this vast province, as compared with the American 

 and European shores, has been but superficially exploited by the 

 naturalist. In whatever part of the world a naturalist may 

 find himself, there is always a tempting array of molluscan life 

 to attract him. Each fauna possesses features peculiar to itself, 

 and from the point of view of the true naturalist, the more 

 somber-hued and conventionally formed mollusks of Northern 

 shores are no less interesting than the gorgeously tinted and 

 fantastically shaped species of the tropics. From any faunal 

 province of our own country one may readily gather all forms 

 necessary to furnish ample material for study from which one 

 may acquire an excellent idea of the biological features of the 

 entire phylum. 



STATION AND HABITS OF THE MOLLUSCA 



The word " station " is used to indicate the nature of the sur- 

 roundings which an animal chooses as most suited to his well- 

 being. Some groups of mollusks, like the littorinas, the trochids, 

 the purpuras, and the majority of those having patelliform shells, 

 generally live on rocks above low-tide mark ; other genera, like 

 Buccinum, Sipho, and Chrysodomus, prefer rocky or gravelly ground 

 below low-tide mark. Other mollusks burrow deep in the mud, 

 many prefer sandy bottoms, while a host of other species seek 

 homes upon the tangled masses of seaweed, living like arboreal 

 creatures in the submarine forests. Nearly every conceivable 

 character of sea-bottom or shore-line between tides harbors its 

 own peculiar types of molluscan life. There are some very curious 

 genera of bivalves that bore their way into the hardest rock and 



