14 THE NAUTILUS. 



fallen over. I was interested in the crown of it from a botanical 

 standpoint, and on examining the flowers and leaves I found a half 

 a dozen or more of the snails I so much wanted on the under side 

 of the latter. Then I looked up over head and saw, to my astonish- 

 ment, that there were thousands of them. I had been walking day 

 by da}' under a firmament of palms that was literally star-spangled 

 with the pretty Helicina dysoni. It was like the story of the navi- 

 gators who were perishing with thirst while sailing in the fresh 

 water off the mouth of the Amazon. 



But finding the Helicinas was one thing and getting them was 

 quite another. I tried to shake the trees, but so thickly did they 

 stand that their tops touched each other everywhere, and I might as 

 well have tried to shake the post of a piazza. Then I started to 

 climb one of them, but the hard, sharp fibres of the wood filled my 

 hands and tore my clothes, and I gave that up. I looked for a pole 

 but there was none to be had. The mangrove scrub between me 

 and the sea was all short and crooked, and I found nothing suitable 

 in the heavy tropical forest north of me, so I went home to the ship 

 that night with the dozen or so I had captured, and a few dead 

 shells. The next day I came by way of some clumps of a curious 

 little palm, with slender stems an inch or more in diameter, growing 

 in low ground and crowned with feathery leaves. I found a straight 

 one among these, some 15 or 16 feet long, cut it and trimmed it with 

 my pocket-knife, and when I reached the palm grove I soon had a 

 shower of Helicinas falling around me. One soon tires of collecting 

 anything that is very abundant, and in a little while I had all I 

 cared for. 



The moral of this little sketch, if it has any, is that in collecting 

 it is necessary to look everywhere, even in the most unlikely places, 

 and my experience has been that the collector who never allows 

 anything to escape his eyes is, as a rule, the most successful. 



DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES OF ACTAEON FROM THE QUATER- 

 NARY BLUFFS OF SPANISH BIGHT, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. 



BY ROBERT E. C. STEARNS. 



Actaeon Traskii. 



Shell small, conical above, rounded below, rather solid, glossy ; 

 sculptured by numerous fine impressed lines or grooves which be- 



