LAND SHELLS : THEIR TENACITY OF LIFE. IO3 



June, the date on which the account was written, it was 

 still alive and in apparent health, preferring cabbage- 

 leaf to lettuce or any other kind of food which had been 

 tried. ^ Dr. Baird's notice was accompanied by a draw- 

 ing of the living animal, made by Miss Waterhouse, 

 which now forms figure 2 in Woodward's '^ Manual." 

 The animal in the other shell was found to be dead. 

 About 1858, two other specimens of the same kind of 

 snail, believed to have been dormant for more than four 

 years, were sent to the Museum by Mr. B. M. Wright. 

 They are said to have been collected in May, 1854, from 

 a heap of thorn bushes, by Mr. Vernedi, on his journey 

 through the Desert of Egypt : the bushes were rather 

 thickly studded with snails, and fifteen or twenty speci- 

 mens which were picked off were carried home and 

 locked up in a drawer, where they remained undisturbed 

 till September, 1858, when two were given to Mr. 

 Wright, who tried with success the experiment of 

 reviving them, and afterwards Mr. Vernedi himself suc- 

 ceeded with two of the others. The elder Binney relates 

 that specimens of this snail which had been collected in 

 Egypt and shipped to Smyrna, thence to Constanti- 

 nople, thence to Rio Janeiro, and finally to Boston, 

 occupying a period of about seven months, appeared in 

 good health when taken from the papers in which they 

 had been enveloped, and after having lain in a drawer 

 for three years, some of them still came out in tolerable 



* According to a label now affixed to the specimen in the 

 Museum, the creature continued to live, after its revival, for two 

 years. 



