30 THE NAUTILUS. 



expected under favorable circuiustances and \vlien nut otherwise 

 occupied to furnisli eggs three inches and upward in length and 

 of corresponding diameter. This looks like business, and here also 

 is a hint in the Avay 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 

 Cyi^nea aurantia by an artificial process. His experiments were 

 inspired not by scientific zeal hut 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 })rofits 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. E. G. S. 



ON THE GENUS COROLLA BALL. 



BY W. H. DALL. 



In 1871 I was suddenly called from my studies at the Smithso- 

 nian Institution to take charge of an expedition for a reconnaissance 

 gurvey of the Aleutian Islands, under the auspices of the U. S. 

 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 



