42 THE NAUTILUS. 



This shell was given me by Mr. Schinacker several years ago. 

 Some sent Dr. Brot, of Geneva, were pronounced new at the time. 



ISAAC LEA DEPAETMENT. 



[Conducted in the interest of the Isaac Lea Conchological Chapter of the Agassiz Associa- 

 ion by its General Secretary, Mrs. M. Burton Williamson.] 



May 28th, the volume of Transactions was forwarded from San 

 Diego east. Since that date the General Secretary has received no 

 word regarding it. 



SEEING EYES. 



[From the report of Mrs. E. A. Lawrence. From the Transactions of the Isaac Lea 

 Chapter for 1896]. 



Lowell says, " Eyes are not so common as people think, or poets 

 would be plentier," and, what he has said of poets, could be said 

 with equal truth of naturalists. Nature, to ninety-nine per cent, of 

 the human family, is a closed book, not because she is not willing to 

 have her pages opened, but because people have no eyes to see with. 

 Thoreau could find in his back-door yard, or, on the shore of Wai- 

 don Pond, the material for printed volumes. It was not because 

 these places had more of interest in them than similar places else- 

 where, but it was because Thoreau had trained his eyes to see. How 

 many people, of all those who yearly visit our sea-shore, have seeing 

 eyes ? They will tell us of the beauty of the foam-capped waves, or 

 the brilliant tints of the water at sunset ; but they will pass with 

 unseeing eyes on careless feet over myriads of living creatures, 

 creatures so wonderful in their mechanism, so beautiful in their 

 form and coloring, and so cunning in their instincts, that they show 

 to the observer the perfect workmanship of the great master, 

 Nature. 



About two years ago, I began to view the sea-side world through 

 open eyes, and in that time I have collected over two hundred spe- 

 cies of mollusca in the vicinity of San Pedro Bay. This past year 

 I found beneath shelving rocks the little Megetabennm bimaculatus 

 Dall, and nestling in hollows in the rough rocks I found a number 

 of Gadinia reticulata Cpr. ; the latter are so nearly the color of the 



