42 THE NAUTILUS. 
This shell was given me by Mr. Schmacker several years ago. 
Some sent Dr. Brot, of Geneva, were pronounced new at the time. 
ISAAC LEA DEPARTMENT. 
[Conducted in the interest of the Isaac Lea Conchological Chapter of the Agassiz Associa- 
ion by its General Secretary, Mrs. M. Burton Williamson. ] 
May 28th, the volume of Transactions was forwarded from San 
Diego east. Since that date the General Secretary has received no 
word regarding it. 
SEEING EYES. 
[From the report of Mrs. E. A. Lawrence. From the Transactions of the Isaac Lea 
Chapter for 1896]. 
Lowell says, “ Eyes are not so common as people think, or poets 
would be plentier,” and, what he has said of poets, could be said 
with equal truth of naturalists. Nature, to ninety-nine per cent. of 
the human family, is a closed book, not because she is not willing to 
have her pages opened, but because people have no eyes to see with. 
Thoreau could find in his back-door yard, or, on the shore of Wal- 
don Pond, the material for printed volumes. It was not because 
these places had more of interest in them than similar places else- 
where, but it was because Thoreau had trained his eyes to see. How 
many people, of all those who yearly visit our sea-shore, have seeing 
eyes? They will tell us of the beauty of the foam-capped waves, or 
the brilliant tints of the water at sunset; but they will pass with 
unseeing eyes on careless feet over myriads of living creatures, 
creatures so wonderful in their mechanism, so beautiful in their 
form and coloring, and so cunning in their instincts, that they show 
to the observer the perfect workmanship of the great master, 
Nature. 
About two years ago, I began to view the sea-side world through 
open eyes, and in that time I have collected over two hundred spe- 
cies of mollusca in the vicinity of San Pedro Bay. This past year 
I found beneath shelving rocks the little Megetabennus bimaculatus 
Dall, and nestling in hollows in the rough rocks I found a number 
of Gadinia reticulata Cpr.; the latter are so nearly the color of the 
