THE - CONCHOLOGISTS’ - EXCHANGE. 107 
Young Collectors’ Corner. 
a 
CABINET NOTES. 
BY PROF, JOSIAH KEEP. 
On the table before me is a drawer from my 
cabinet of shells, This drawer contains a 
good many species each one of which is care- 
fully labelled. A few of the larger shells have 
their names marked on some smooth surface, 
with pen and ink, and lie loose within the 
light and shallow drawer; those which are an 
inch or two long are in pasteboard trays, with 
the name upon a small card; the little shells, 
however, are securely packed in short bottles or 
glass tubes. The label is written upon a nar- 
row slip of paper and is placed inside with 
the shells, and then the bottle is corked. 
By this arrangement the small shells are se- 
cure from dust, cannot be scattered, and al- 
ways haye the proper label with them  Be- 
sides, they take up very little space in the cab- 
inet, and when they are needed it is easy to re- 
move the cork and produce the shells for care- 
ful examination. 
For very small shells I use two drachm_ho- 
meopathic vials, while for larger specimens the 
small wide-mouthed morphine bottles of the 
druggist are very useful. Naturalists’ tubes are 
excellent, but are somewhat more expensive 
than bottles, 
The pasteboard trays were made for me at a 
paper-box factory. They are about half an 
inch deep, and are of different sizes. A good 
plan is to have a small size as the standard,and 
make the larger sizes just two or four times as 
large. Thus the smallest ones may be an inch 
and a half square; the next size is of the same 
width but is three inches long, while the larg- 
est ones are three inches square. In this way 
they pack together very nicely, and as you will 
naturally use the smallest size, as far as possi- 
ble, the room is divided very economically. 
As to labels, they should give the 
name of the shell and the locality where it was 
collected This last information is of particu- 
lar value, as the name may possibly be chang- 
ed, but the locality when once determined is a 
fixed fact. 
One of my cabinets is a simple and conven- 
ient case, having two rows of drawers which 
are so made that they may be easily withdrawn 
and placed on the table. The slats on which 
the drawers run are about four inches apart, 
though a few of them are placed at a greater 
disance to accommodate larger shells. A pair 
of doors in front, to exclude the dust, com- 
pletes the case. Such an one can be made by 
any carpenter for a small sum, and the young 
collector who is anxious to have a convenient 
case without much expense may easily obtain 
his desire. 
The shells in the drawer now before me were 
all found on the coast of California. Their 
owners lived their little lives in the Pacific 
Ocean, close tothe shore. Some of them loy- 
ed to burrow in the sand, others clung to the 
rocks while the waves dashed over them, 
while a few preferred deeper water where they 
sometimes anchored themselves to the long 
stalls of the great sea-weeds. I know something 
about a good many of the little creatures whose 
shells are now so quiet and still in this cabinet 
drawer, for I gathered them myself, and each 
box or bottle brings up a long story of an early 
morning walk, or an afternoon ramble, or a 
tedious search, successful at last, however, and 
I can almost hear the swish and gurgle and 
roar of the waves as I sit here in the quiet 
room. But though I remember how they were 
living and where they were resting on those 
same mornings, still there is not one about 
which I would not like to find out a great 
many more facts,—where the little mollusk 
was hatched, how it looked while young, what 
were its habits, how old it was and why it was 
in such a place on that morning when I found 
it at low tide. 
Here is one that I particularly love to exam- 
ine. It is‘the pretty Purple Olive-shell, Oxv- 
ella biblicata, Sby. 
It is about an inch in length, with smooth or 
polished surface, and its color varies from pure 
white to a rich bluish purple. After a long 
search I found them abundantly, at the time of 
the lowest tides, very early in the morning. 
The little creatures have a beautiful pearl-col- 
