112 THE NAUTILUS. 



I hardly dared move for fear of stepping on them, and to calm my 

 excitement, and assure myself that it was not all a wild concbolo- 

 gist's dream, I stood still and tried to count a hundred, but when I 

 bad got to twenty I saw half a dozen live ones clinging like a string 

 of enormous white beads to a little shrub right beside me, and I 

 quit counting and gathered them in. Then I sat down and without 

 moving I picked up thirty fresh, cabinet specimens. About that 

 time it just began to dawn on me that the great Lucerna acuta was 

 as abundant as the aspera, and in no time I had my hands full of 

 the line, big, brown fellows. Afterward I got me eyes focussed down 

 to seeing Sagdas, Helix sinuata, three or four Cylindrellas and as 

 many Tudoras, and that under the leaves, and among rubbish there 

 were quantities of small Gland bias, Zonites and Ilicrophysas, that 

 the ground when closely examined was literally bespangled with 

 lovely little Proserpinas, that shone in the sun like polished opals. 



To my dying day I never expect again to see such collecting 

 unless I revisit Jamaica. Hunger, fatigue, headache, the flight of 

 time were forgotten, and I was only warned that I must return by 

 the fact that the sun was nearly down before I knew it, and that I 

 had an eight mile walk and darkness before me. On a little spot 

 no larger than a city lot, I had taken in a few hours over thirty 

 species of land shells. As I reluctantly tore myself away I took 

 fifteen asperas from a small Mango, and on the border of the clear- 

 ing where some one had bent together a couple of young logwood 

 trees, not as large as my Avrist, I picked twenty-five more fully adult 

 and one young one. 



Shall I tell how in a narrow limestone gorge of the Rio Cobre near 

 Bogwalk in the talus under a ledge some two rods long we found 

 no less than forty-five species, all living, and nearly every specimen 

 in perfect condition ; or how at Mandeville the honey-combed rocks 

 were crowded with lovely Choanopomas, rough as chestnut burrs,^ 

 now H. wild with excitement and regardless of bats, centipedes, 

 scorpions, and poisonous vines wedged himself into a dark cave 

 whose mouth was at least two sizes too small for his body ; how he 

 stuck fast, and alone and far from help, could neither get forward 

 or backward for awhile, how he pushed on to be rewarded by find- 

 ing quantities of Helix peracutissima and the great purple H.jamai- 

 censis, the latter clinging to each other on the roof like so many 

 stalactites, a snail which, by the way, we had repeatedly been told 

 was extinct ! I fear it may be now. 



