196 MANTON COPELAND 
upward by squirting sea water over the siphon, but more oyster 
juice taken into the organ caused immediate locomotion to the 
top of the aquarium, where it was fed. 
In many instances the response of the buried snail was almost 
startling in its suddenness, the animal pushing its way upward 
through the sand with its powerful muscles, and appearing entirely 
free on the surface within a minute or two after stimulation. 
2. The finding of distant food 
That Busycon is remarkably successful in finding food is 
only too well known to the lobsterman, who frequently finds 
his traps containing more whelks than lobsters. One fisherman 
whom I interviewed told me that he had taken as many as twenty 
in one lobster pot in a night, and that oily bait such as mackerel, 
swordfish and bluefish attracted them in the greatest numbers. 
At the time, he was sorting over hundreds of specimens contained 
in two large cars in view of shipping them away to be cut up 
and used for fish bait. The entire collection had been gathered 
from his lobster traps. 
Sumner, Osburn and Cole (713) record the capture of “‘fifty- 
one large specimens” in “three lobster pots in a single day.”’ 
How Busyecon finds distant food is, therefore, a problem of 
peculiar interest and one which was carefully investigated 
experimentally. Before attempting to answer this question, 
two experiments, demonstrating the ability of the animal to 
find food in an aquarium, may be briefly described. 
A snail was placed in a circular glass jar measuring approxi- 
mately twenty-seven centimeters in diameter and twenty-five 
centimeters in height. A ball of cheese cloth was hung over 
the rim of the jar so that it dangled in the water near the surface. 
Opposite this was suspended in a similar way a cheese cloth bag 
containing the soft parts of an oyster, which was slightly squeezed 
to facilitate the diffusion of juices. The snail moved slowly 
around the periphery of the bottom of the jar. Passing beneath 
the baited bag, it turned back stretching its siphon upward. 
It then circled about showing the increased activity characteristic 
