em N Serius. 
Vor. X. APRIL, 1897. No. 12 
THE IANTHINAS. 
BY CHARLES T. SIMPSON. 
The Ianthinas, or violet snails, live gregarious in the open seas of 
the tropics, and float by means of a raft composed of vesicles filled 
with air, which cannot be withdrawn into the shell. Sometimes 
they are carried by winds and currents into the seas of temperate 
regions, and their shells have been found along the shores of our 
own country as far north as New England. I had collected for 
many years and in many countries, but had never found, perhaps, 
more than a dozen dead, broken shells. In January, 1883, I was on 
a large schooner bound for Spanish Honduras, and we stopped at 
Key West, where I spent one of the most delightful weeks of my life 
gathering Cylindrellas, Chondropomas, Cerions, Helicina orbiculata, 
and the beautiful Orthalicus, Liguus, and Bulimulus multilineatus 
in the thick, thorny, tropical scrub, or Strombs and bright Tellinas 
and blending Neritas and a hundred other interesting forms along 
the south shore. We were to sail about noon on Sunday, but I 
could not resist the temptation to take one last look at the places 
where I had spent so many happy hours, so after breakfast I wan- 
dered through the city and out to the beach. 
Before I reached it I noticed that as far as the eye could see, it 
was a inass of the most intense, glowing violet color, and on coming 
up to it was astonished to find that this color came trom untold mil- 
lions of Ianthina, which had been washed up in the night, for when 
I had 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 real 
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 rocks one could have waded in among them up to his 
knees—shell, animal and float all of a vivid purple, the richness of 
