THE NAUTILUS. 15 



examined. The greater part of it is river drift. I have just now 

 shipped it 500 miles to my new home. 



My experience has given emphasis to the importance, readily ap- 

 preciated in marine collecting, of securing many examples of what 

 one finds, though time has not always permitted it. The Hoosier 

 woman who advised her husband to " git a plenty while yer gittin," 

 was wise in her day and generation. 



In 1895, I found a quantity of Physa virgata traski Lea, in Salt 

 River, at Tempe, Arizona, large and fine, and a goodly number were 

 taken. The same locality has been revisited a half dozen times since, 

 but not until April, 1899, have I again seen as large ones. Cirnega 

 is the Spanish word applied to a marshy place from which water 

 flows at once a marsh and a spring. In one of these, near Critten- 

 den, Arizona, in the summer of 1897, I found Physa mexicana con- 

 oidea, and under logs, Bifidaria pentodon ; but it was late in the 

 afternoon when I reached the place, and I could secure but few of 

 either. I had supposed it a perpetual spring, but returning last fall, 

 I found it as dry as a floor. 



Not a little of my collecting has been done in snatches of time when 

 it seemed almost an accident that anything was discovered. As the 

 train on the Santa Fe Pacific R. R. stopped one morning at Navajo 

 Springs, Ariz., I rushed down to the bed of the (then dry) Rio Puerco 

 of the West (Arizona rivers sometimes run bottom-side up), to see 

 if I could pick up. something from the drift, not expecting the train 

 to stop more than five minutes at the most. But fortunately a freight 

 accident ahead delayed our train two hours, and I gathered twenty- 

 one species. The other passengers were grumbling over a late break- 

 fast, but a trifle like a belated meal does not disturb a " shell crank " 

 when there is any collecting on hand. 



On the 13th of last January I was taking the 90-mile stage drive 

 to White Oaks, N. M.; as the stage stopped to change teams at 9 

 a. m., I walked on ahead with no thought of any collecting at that 

 time of the year, but passing an artificial pond I concluded to take a 

 look at it. By breaking the ice I secured five examples of Physa 

 mexicana, Phil. My hands were cut on the ice and chilled by the 

 wind. I had nothing to put my shells in, and carried them in my 

 hand for an hour till I found an empty cartridge and could deposit 

 my shells within a shell. At 3 p. m., when the next change was 

 made, I again walked on ; and under some rocks, where the snow had 



