Liberia ^ 



of this genus lay very large white eggs, nearly the size of a 

 pea. Other snails of the same family {Stenogyrid^) lay eggs as 

 large as those of a thrush, white and shaped like a bird's egg. 



The Fresh-water Molluscs of the order Prosobranchiata 

 offer perhaps four species peculiar to Liberia in their distribution. 

 The marine are of course of widespread distribution, and only 

 those are catalogued here which are commonly met with out 

 of water on rock or sand. Among these may be mentioned 

 the limpet-like shells of Siphonaria and Gadinia, thickly clustered 

 on the rocks up to high-tide mark and able to live for a long 

 time out of water, content with the splashings of the high tides. 



Biittikofer states that the fresh-water shells of the numerous 

 kinds of Melania are so abundant in parts of the St. Paul's 

 River that they are burnt by the Liberians to make lime. 

 Several other molluscs of fresh and brackish water furnish lime 

 to the Liberians through their shells, and this lime is used to 

 make mortar for building as well as whitewash for the walls 

 and ceilings. Large oysters, apparently of the genus Ostrea 

 (besides the " fresh-water oysters " of the genus Mtherid), are 

 familiar objects in the estuaries of all the Liberian rivers, growing 

 as they do in bunches affixed to the mangrove stalks and the 

 trunks and branches of other trees that lie in brackish water. 

 These oysters are much eaten by the I>iberians. Nevertheless, 

 unless specially treated they are dangerous for Europeans (and 

 probably also for black men, only that not so much attention 

 is paid to the unrecorded sufferings of Negroes). This may 

 be because they take some poisonous substance out of the mud 

 or water into their intestines. Moreover, when drawn from 

 the brackish water and not from the sea, they are so insipid 

 in taste as to be quite repellent. When the present writer 

 lived in the rivers of the Niger Delta, he, following the example 

 of the European traders in that region, used to collect oysters 



840 



