THE NAUTILUS. 



Voi,. XX. OCTOBER, 19O6. No. 6. 



A HEALTHY COLONY OF EPIPHRAGMOPHORA TTJDICULATA. 



BY F. W. KELSEY. 



Wliile enjoying a short vacation, during the month of July of this 

 year, I sojourned with an old-time friend, Mr. I. J. Frazee, in 

 Pamoosa canon, about fifteen miles north of Escondido, in San 

 Diego County, and whenever I went prowling around among the hills 

 with my camera I always kept my weather eye open for anything 

 that carried a shell on its back. 



My efforts were rewarded by a goodly find of Glyptostoma new- 

 berryanum Binney, and Epiphragmophora tudiculata Binney. The 

 latter, in one instance, were so plentiful as to deserve more than 

 passing notice, and I went to a good deal of trouble to enable me to 

 get a photograph to present to the readers of the NAUTILUS. 



By means of bars, 1 moved a rock weighing over a ton, back from 

 the face of the cliff, so as to allow the light to enter and to give an 

 unobstructed view of the colony of helices hibernating in the lower 

 part of the cleft between the two masses of rock, and occupying a 

 space of not more than two square feet. 



Of course, only a portion of the group shows in the picture, but 

 after making the exposure, I collected fifty-eight adult shells and left 

 more than half that number of immature ones for seed. 



With one exception, I have never before seen snails in their wild 

 state so plentiful. This was in the summer of 1902 when I collected 

 over one thousand live Epiphragmophora stearnsiana Gabb, in a 

 space not over fifty yards square at Pacific Beach, near San Diego. 



