110 THE NAUTILUS. 



NOTES ON COLLECTING SHELLS IN JAMAICA. 



BY CHAS. T. SIMPSON. 



About the first of December, Mr. John B. Henderson, Jr., of 

 Washington, and the writer visited the island of Jamaica for the 

 purpose, principally, of collecting land, fresh- water and marine mol- 

 lusks. We called on Mr. Henry Vindryes, a veteran collector and 

 conchologist in Kingston, inspecting his magnificent set of Jamaica 

 Shells, and receiving from him every possible courtesy and many 

 useful notes as to localities. 



As our stay was to be limited to some three weeks, we were anx- 

 ious to begin work at once, to actually put our hands on some 

 of the land snails in their homes. We hired a cab with a good 

 natured darkey for a driver, and a miserable, little, bony horse, of 

 uncertain color, and started for the suburbs, in the direction of 

 Rockport with our eyes strained to catch sight of the splendid 

 Odhalicus undatus, which we were told we might find on our way. 

 The poor little horse, which wobbled about first from one side of the 

 road to the other as if in search of snails, but probably from sheer 

 exhaustion, was suddenly brought to a standstill without much 

 exertion by the driver, who exclaimed as he pointed his whip to 

 some low trees on the south of the road " Da de snail you want 

 massa. " I think we had all observed them at the same moment, and 

 with a shout like boys we were out of the cab and racing across 

 the road, through a terrible hedge of wild pinguin in less time than it 

 takes to write it. There they were, great beautiful fellows, varie- 

 gated with ash color and glossy black, one, a half dozen, fifty, a 

 hundred, in fact without limit! They clung to all kinds of trees 

 and shrubs in the low tangled scrub, and in great numbers to the 

 tall cylindrical Spring Cereus ; in almost every case glued by an 

 epiphragmso solid that it was well nigh impossible to dislodge them, 

 and invariably with the spire pointing downward. 



When we came out of the woods an hour afterward we were as 

 wet with perspiration as though we had been dipped in water, and 

 covered with every description of sticking burrs ; our flesh was 

 lacerated, and our hands dirty and bleeding, for everything in the 

 scrub bears villainous thorns. On the debtor side we had ruined 

 two suits of clothes, and to our credit could be placed over five 

 hundred superb living Orthalicus. We had learned a lesson, too, 



