i 14 MY LIFE 



opened its mouth with a stick, and saw it had tremendous 

 fangs, and proceeded to tie it up in a handkerchief, and while 

 doing so supposes he must have touched a nerve in the cut 



part, for the mouth suddenly snapped, and a fang pierced his 

 thumb. He instantly put a ligature round the base of the 



thumb, got a friend who was with him to lance it deeply with 

 a pen-knife, and sucked it for some time. ( )n taking off the 

 ligature an hour afterwards, the arm swelled as well as the 

 side of his body, and he suffered great pain. He applied water 

 constantly, drank a good deal of whisky, and kept quiet for 

 some days, but the thumb suppurated, and half the bone of 

 the terminal joint came away. Then it healed, but the thumb 

 was reduced to about half its normal size, with a correspond- 

 ingly small nail ; but it is quite serviceable, and being so small is 

 for many purposes more useful than the other ! 



Mr. Dury had a very fine collection of land and fresh- 

 water shells from all parts of the States, and I spent one 

 morning looking over them. They were exceedingly numer- 

 ous, and of curious forms, many having strange contortions 

 of the lips, supposed to be for the purpose of protection 

 against the smaller birds, ants, etc. The freshwater shells 

 — mostly mussels (Unionidse) — were wonderfully fine and 

 varied, some curiously tubercled, some with ribs, others with 

 long spines. They are also often finely coloured inside — 

 white, pink, yellow, or orange — while in many of the species 

 there is a variation of form in the two sexes. Altogether 

 it was a most interesting collection. Mr. Dury told me he 

 began collecting when a boy, owing to a gentleman offering 

 him a few cents for every different kind of shell he could 

 find, however small, and he was thus led to search for them, 

 and to notice their forms and colours, and was surprised to 

 find how many different kinds there were, even within a walk 

 of his own home. He was thus induced to become a profes- 

 sional collector. There are about two hundred and fifty spe- 

 cies of land-shells in temperate North America, while the 

 fresh-water species are still more numerous, its magnificent 

 water-system including the great lakes and such grand rivers 

 as the Mississippi, being richer in mollusca than any other part 



