NONSUCH 



most no external adjustments to the new life. If 

 sheer number of species spells success, the mollusks 

 are second only to insects, with at least sixty thou- 

 sand of living forms. 



Having abused my little Helix and heaped scorn 

 upon his ancestors and his conservatism, it amuses 

 me to think of some of his virtues and achievements. 

 "Just a snail" is the sum total of the conscious 

 thought given by most of us to these creatures. Even 

 when we become enthusiastic over the delicacy of 

 form and color of a collection of shells, we think of 

 them rather as an assemblage of inorganic crystals 

 than as the homes of living individual animals, 

 which have sought food and a mate, have travelled 

 perhaps many miles in their lifetime, and experi- 

 enced adventures as momentous to them as ship- 

 wreck or a creeping barrage to us. 



The shells of mollusks are as worthy of atten- 

 tion as they are beautiful. The interests of a Wall 

 Street banker and a collector of sea-shells might 

 reasonably be taken as representing antithetical ex- 

 tremes, and yet shells from the point of view of 

 money have vitally concerned both the savage and 

 the man of science. The latter has been willing to 

 pay hundreds of dollars for a unique or an espe- 

 cially rare specimen, while for centuries cowries 

 and wampum have passed as the only monetary 

 medium of exchange in many lands. To be sure four 

 thousand cowries have sometimes had only the value 

 of a shilling, but on the other hand, in China I have 

 had to load a pony with strings of strung cash, so 



210 



