14 THE NAUTILUS. 
fallen over. I was interested in the crown of it from a botanical 
standpoint, and on examining the flowers and leaves I found a half 
a dozen or more of the snails I so much wanted on the under side 
of the latter. Then I looked up over head and saw, to my astonish- 
ment, that there were thousands of them. I had been walking day 
by day under a firmament of palms that was literally star-spangled 
with the pretty Helicina dysoni. It was like the story of the navi- 
gators who were perishing with thirst while sailing in the fresh 
water off the mouth of the Amazon. 
But finding the Helicinas was one thing and getting them was 
quite another. I tried to shake the trees, but so thickly did they 
stand that their tops touched each other everywhere, and I might as 
well have tried to shake the post of a piazza. Then I started to 
climb one of them, but the hard, sharp fibres of the wood filled my 
hands and tore my clothes, and I gave that up. I looked fora pole 
but there was none to be had. The mangrove scrub between me 
and the sea was all short and crooked, and I found nothing suitable 
in the heavy tropical forest north of me, so I went home to the ship 
that night with the dozen or so I had captured, and a few dead 
shells. The next day I came by way of some clumps of a curious 
little palm, with slender stems an inch or more in diameter, growing 
in low ground and crowned with feathery leaves. I founda straight 
one among these, some 15 or 16 feet long, cut it and trimmed it with 
my pocket-knife, and when I reached the palm grove I soon had a 
shower of Helicinas falling around me. One soon tires of collecting 
anything that is very abundant, and in a little while I had all I 
cared for. 
The moral of this little sketch, if it has any, is that in collecting 
it is necessary to look everywhere, even in the most unlikely places, 
and my experience has been that the collector who never allows 
anything to escape his eyes is, as a rule, the most successful. 
DESCRIPTION OF A NEW SPECIES OF ACTAEON FROM THE QUATER- 
NARY BLUFFS OF SPANISH BIGHT, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA. 
BY ROBERT E. C. STEARNS. 
Actaeon Traskii. 
Shell small, conical above, rounded below, rather solid, glossy ; 
sculptured by numerous fine impressed lines or grooves which be- 
