THE STRAIT OF MAGELLAN. 115 



side of the South American continent, the Cordillera appear- 

 ing to constitute its head-quarters. On the eastern side, on 

 the other hand, it has a much more limited range — a steep 

 cliff near 'the mouth of the Eio l!^egro, according to Mr. 

 Darwin, being its northern limit on the Patagonian coast. 

 He mentions Port Desire and the mouth of the Santa Cruz 

 river, on the same coast, as localities where, it is met with 

 farther south ; and we noticed it both at Port Gallegos and 

 in several localities in the eastern part of the Strait of 

 Magellan, almost invariably in the neighbourhood of steep 

 cliffs. 



By the time I left the Condor cliff it was nearly low tide, 

 a broad expanse of wet sandy beach being thus uncovered ; 

 and as I crossed this, my attention was arrested by a 

 number of horse-shoe shaped depressions, accompanied by 

 neighbouring elevations in the wet sand. On digging into 

 these with my hands, I was much interested to find a number 

 of specimens of a live Volute. The body of the animal, which 

 possessed a very large foot, was in all cases greatly protruded 

 from the shell, and of a fine deep purple colour, with deli- 

 cate ramifications of a lighter tint, while the under surface 

 of the foot was yellowish-white. Other examples of the 

 mollusc were met with upon the clusters of live mussels 

 which covered many of the large stones on the beach, and 

 were, I suspect, feeding on the bivalve, after the manner of the 

 familiar Pur'pura Lapillus of our British shores. This volute 

 afterwards proved to be the Voluta Ferussacii, of whose habitat 

 naturalists appear to have been hitherto ignorant, though the 

 species has been known for a long period. It appears to be 

 very plentiful towards the eastern entrance of the Strait, judg- 

 ing from the numbers of dead and broken shells which I sub- 

 sequently found on many of the beaches, but does not seem 



