30 THE NAUTILUS. 
expected under favorable circumstances and when not otherwise 
occupied to furnish eggs three inches and upward in length and 
of corresponding diameter. This looks like business, and here also 
is a hint in the way of a new industry. I was at one time slightly 
acquainted, with an old man, an alleged conchologist from the sunny 
land of France, of whom it was stated with much probability of 
truth, that he cooked common cowries in acid and bedeviled them 
in various ways, in the effort and hope to produce the beautiful 
Cypreea aurantia by an artificial process. His experiments were 
inspired not by scientific zeal but the lust of mammon. He did 
not succeed. His experiments rested on an imperfect ethical basis. 
But with the big bulimus as above, provided one could get enough 
to start the business and stock a small cochlearia or snail ranch, the 
business would be interesting scientifically and commercially and in 
no way contra bona mores. The proportions of the dividends com- 
pared to the profits of other kinds of business, might not be quite 
as large as the proportions of the big Bulimulus compared with the 
rest of his relatives. 
But alas there are many incongruities and paradoxes in this 
world, and with this melancholy fact before us let us rest and find 
consolation, while dreaming of omelets and custards made of 
Bulimus eggs; and let us also in kindness overlook the infelicities of 
typographic errors and lapses of proof-readers. 
R. BOCAS: 
ON THE GENUS COROLLA DALL. 
BY We Hea Ic. 
In 1871 I was suddenly called from my studies at the Smithso- 
nian Institution to take charge of an expedition for a reconnaissance 
survey of the Aleutian Islands, under the auspices of the U. §. 
Coast Survey. The molluscan material collected by me in the 
Nothern Pacific from 1865-68 had been the object of much care and 
scrutiny. The types of all doubtful or supposed new species had 
been sent to Dr. P. P. Carpenter, then recognized as the chief expert 
on the shells of the N. W. Coast. He had held them without report 
for two years, but under the circumstances it was not possible to 
delay longer. They were hastily recalled, and that nearly four years 
of hardship and exploration might not seem entirely fruitless, the 
