110 THE NAUTILUS. 
NOTES ON COLLECTING SHELLS IN JAMAICA. 
BY CHAS. T. SIMPSON. 
About the first of December, Mr. John B. Henderson, Jr., of 
Washington, and the writer visited the island of Jamaica for the 
purpose, principally, of collecting land, fresh-water and marine mol- 
lusks. We called on Mr. Henry Vindryes, a veteran collector and 
conchologist in Kingston, inspecting his magnificent set of Jamaica 
Shells, and receiving from him every possible courtesy and many 
useful notes as to localities. 
As our stay was to be limited to some three weeks, we were anx- 
ious to begin work at once, to actually put our hands on some 
of the land snails in their homes. We hired a cab with a good 
natured darkey for a driver, and a miserable, little, bony horse, of 
uncertain color, and started for the suburbs, in the direction of 
Rockport with our eyes strained to catch sight of the splendid 
Orthalicus undatus, which we were told we might find on our way. 
The poor little horse, which wobbled about first from one side of the 
roaé to the other asif in search of snails, but probably from sheer 
exhaustion, was suddenly brought to a standstill without much 
exertion by the driver, who exclaimed as he pointed his whip to 
some low trees on the south of the road “Da de snail you want 
massa.”’ Ithink we had all observed them at the same moment, and 
with a shout like boys we were out of the cab and racing across 
the road, through a terrible hedge of wild pinguin in less time than it 
takes to write it. There they were, great beantiful fellows, varie- 
gated with ash color and glossy black, one, a half dozen, fifty, a 
hundred, in fact without limit! They clung to all kinds of trees 
and shrubs in the low tangled scrub, and in great numbers to the 
tall cylindrical Spring Cereus; in almost every case glued by an 
epiphragm so solid that it was well nigh impossible to dislodge them, 
and invariably with the spire pointing downward. 
When we came out of the woods an hour afterward we were as 
wet with perspiration as though we had been dipped in water, and 
covered with every description of sticking burrs; our flesh was 
lacerated, and our hands dirty and bleeding, for everything in the 
scrub bears villainous thorns. On the debtor side we had ruined 
two suits of clothes, and to our credit could be placed over five 
hundred superb living Orthalicus. We had learned a lesson, too, 
