No. 6 (1921) COMMON MOLLUSCS OF SOUTH INDIA 



13/ 



animal — foot, mantle, and head — is striped like a tiger with yellow 

 and black. When crawling it presents a remarkable appearance, 

 the shell all but lost to sight in the enwrapping lobes of the mantle 

 and foot. 



The eggs are deposited in a wonderful egg mass — the strangest 

 of any produced in these seas. It stands nearly a foot high, a great 

 honeycombed glassy cylinder made up of some hundreds of clus- 

 tered capsules each nearly an inch in length. In form and sculp- 

 turing it resembles a tall cylindrical pineapple, the capsules 

 representing the bracts. A narrow cavity perforates the centre of 

 the cylinder. The walls of the different cells are tough, colourless 

 and hyaline. As in Turbinella, a number of ova are deposited in 

 each capsule, but with growth all disappear eventually but one, 









Fig. 22. Egg-mass of the Melon 

 shell (Palk Bay). X h 



Fig. 23. Another gastropod egg-mass, paren- 

 tage doubtful (Tuticorin). XL 



and this, when it frees itself by eating through the capsule wall, is 

 nearly an inch in length. Long before they come out, the young 

 can be seen clearly through the transparent walls. The spire at 

 this period is distinctly conical, and the whole shell extremely 

 like the land-snails Bulimus and Achatina. This giant egg-mass 

 6 



