WATERS OF WESTERN INDIA. 79 



fleets, each snail floating in his own inverted shell. I have some 

 doubts as to whether they can sink at all. It is certain that they 

 cannot do so when breeding, as they have then in tow a sort of raft 

 that they make of glutinous air-bubbles, with their eggs hanging 

 underneath it; and there is no means of withdrawing the air from 

 this float. Moreover, the spire of the shell, which would be the 

 upper part if the snail could crawl on the land or on the bottom, is 

 always of a very pale blue, almost white, and the base (or what 

 ought to be the base) is of a deep blue, which coloration, in a 

 marine animal, is good ground for supposing that the light side is 

 the bottom, aud the dark side the top, in its regular trim. 



When stranded, the Ianthina is perfectly helpless, cannot crawl 

 an inch, and seems to die almost at once. I never could get a 

 stranded one to live. As for catching them alive, to do that one 

 must find out their fine weather quarters, which are probably, as far 

 as we are concerned, on the other side of a good stretch of herring- 

 pond ; for the winds that bring us Ianthina fleets are north- 

 westers, occurring from August to September ; and the snails must 

 be brought by them from the Arabian Sea. But to be in that sea, 

 N.-W. of Bombay, at that time, they must have got up on the 

 S.-W. gales of May, June, and July from somewhere far to the 

 S.-W., probably the neighbourhood of the Seychelles and north of 

 that. If their head-quarters were much further east we should get 

 them with the early south-westers. I shall have more to say about 

 these winds and currents later on. 



We have one pink specimen of Ianthina, probably unique, and 

 as probably coloured by disease. I picked it up myself, dead and 

 empty ; but its colour cannot well have been the result of weather- 

 ing. It was perfect, and long before so fragile a shell as Ianthina 

 could bleach upon the " thundering shore" where it was found the 

 waves alone would have smashed it to pieces, to say nothing of 

 frequent ti-affic. I find it difficult to secure a perfect specimen, 

 except by having a watch kept on the shore (for this and other 

 matters). When it is reported that "blue flower-shells" are 

 coming in, I go or send at the moment of high water to pick them 

 up. Being very light, they are always stranded along the high 

 water mark only ; and in an hour after the first of ebb the delicate 

 tissues of the animal are withered ; while a little blue stain on the 

 sand often marks the discharge, in the last agony, of a blue fluid, 

 which may perhaps be used for concealment, like the sepia of the 



