The Violet Snails 



I cannot draw from my own experience a vivid picture of 

 a stranded school of violet snails, but I here quote Mr. Charles 

 T. Simpson's letter to the hlauiilus, April, 1897: 



I had collected for many years and in many countries, 

 but had never found, perhaps, more than a dozen dead or broken 

 shells. In January, 1883, 1 was on a schooner bound for Spanish 

 Honduras, and we stopped at Key West, where 1 spent one of the 

 most delightful weeks of my life gathering Cylindrellas, Chondro- 

 pomas, Cerions and the beautiful Urthalicus, Liguusand Bulimulus 

 multilineatus in the thick, thorny tropical scrub. We were to sail 

 at noon on Sunday, but 1 could not resist the temptation to take 

 one last look at the beach. So after breakfast 1 wandered out. 



Before 1 came to the beach I noticed that as far as the eye 

 could see it was a mass of the most intense, glowing violet colour, 

 and on coming up to it I was astonished to find that this colour 

 came from untold millions of lanthinas which had been washed 

 up during the night, for when I left the beach the evening before 

 at dusk not one was to be seen. To say that they lined the shore 

 gives no idea of the truth. Everywhere, from below low water 

 to highest tide mark they were piled up, in most places, over 

 shoe-top deep, and in the hollows of the rocks one could have 

 waded in among them up to his knees. Shell, animal and float 

 were all a vivid purple, the richness of which soon fades in dead 

 shells and preserved specimens. 



There had been no storm, nothing but an ordinary breeze 

 up from the south, and it is probable that an immense school 

 had been drifting along, and where they struck the island some 

 five miles in length, every one in that distance was stranded. 



I had brought no basket nor sack nor anything to collect in, 

 but I could not bear to go away and leave that vast bed of trea- 

 sures without taking at least a few with me. I searched in vain 

 for a box or tin can or piece of canvas, but I could find absolutely 

 nothing. I took out my handkerchief, knotted the corners, 

 and tried to pull out the animals from the shells, but the whole 

 mass was so slippery, and the shells so frail that the latter in- 

 variably broke. So I filled the handkerchief with shells and all, 

 as many as it would hold. Then I took off my straw hat and 

 filled it, and that did not satisfy me, for as I wandered along I 

 found so many finer specimens that I began to put them into 

 my pockets, and I did not leave the shore until every pocket was 

 bursting full. I had on a linen coat and white duck pants. The 

 day was hot, and it seemed to me that those lanthinas melted. 

 In a little while streaks of glowing violet began to show down 

 my clothes. I felt a clammy, wet, uncomfortable feeling clear 

 through to my skin, and my shoes were filled with the purple 

 liquid. By the time I reached the city I looked like an Indian 

 in war paint. I have no doubt that the people of Key West, 



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