1A? THE NAUTILUS. 
I hardly dared move for fear of stepping on them, and to calm my 
excitement, and assure myself that it was not all a wild concholo- 
gist’s dream, I stood still and tried to count a hundred, but when I 
had got to twenty I saw half adozen live ones clinging like a string 
of enormous white beads to a little shrub right beside me, and I 
quit counting and gathered them in. Then I sat down and without 
moving I picked up thirty fresh, cabinet specimens. About that 
time it just began to dawn on me that the great Lucerna acuta was 
as abundant as the aspera, and in no time I had my hands full of 
the fine, big, brown fellows. Afterward I got me eyes focussed down 
to seeing Sagdas, Helix sinuata, three or four Cylindrellas and as 
many Judoras, and that under the leaves, and among rubbish there 
were quantities of small Glandinas, Zonites and Microphysas, that 
the ground when closely examined was literally bespangled with 
lovely little Proserpinas, that shone in the sun like polished opals. 
To my dying day I never expect again to see such collecting 
unless I revisit Jamaica. Hunger, fatigue, headache, the flight of 
time were forgotten, and J was only warned that I must return by 
the fact that the sun was nearly down before I knew it, and that I 
had an eight mile walk and darkness before me. On a little spot 
no larger than a city lot, I had taken in a few hours over thirty 
species of land shells. AsI reluctantly tore myself away I took 
fifteen asperas from a small Mango, and on the border of the clear- 
ing where some one had bent together a couple of young logwood 
trees, not as large as my wrist, I picked twenty-five more fully adult 
and one young one. 
Shall I tell how in a narrow limestone gorge of the Rio Cobre near 
Bogwalk in the talus under a ledge some two rods long we found 
no less than forty-five species, all living, and nearly every specimen 
in perfect condition ; or how at Mandeville the honey-combed rocks 
were crowded with lovely Choanopomas, rough as chestnut burrs, 
now H. wild with excitement and regardless of bats, centipedes, 
scorpions, and poisonous vines wedged himself into a dark cave 
whose mouth was at least two sizes too small for his body ; how he 
stuck fast, and alone and far from help, could neither get forward 
or backward for awhile, how he pushed on to be rewarded by find- 
ing quantities of Helix peracutissima and the great purple H. jamai- 
censis, the latter clinging to each other on the roof like so many 
stalactites, a snail which, by the way, we had repeatedly been told 
was extinct! I fear it may be now. 
