MOLLUSKS 313 
in excess of anything to be found upon our shores. The 
veritable paradise of the naturalist is the East Indies. There 
the “aristocratic” genera, so called on account of their mar- 
velous beauty, occur in their highest development — Voluta, 
Mitra, Oliva, Conus, and the various murices. Thére also are to 
be found the pearl-oysters, Meleagrina margaritifera, that yield 
their valuable harvest, and the giant clam, Tridacna gigas, which 
measures sometimes five feet in length. Over eight thousand 
species of mollusks are described from this surpassingly rich 
region, yet this vast province, as compared with the American 
and European shores, has been but superficially exploited by the 
naturalist. In whatever part of the world a naturalist may 
find himself, there is always a tempting array of molluscan life 
to attract him. Each fauna possesses features peculiar to itself, 
and from the point of view of the true naturalist, the more 
somber-hued and conventionally formed mollusks of Northern 
shores are no less interesting than the gorgeously tinted and 
fantastically shaped species of the tropics. From any faunal 
province of our own country one may readily gather all forms 
necessary to furnish ample material for study from which one 
may acquire an excellent idea of the biological features of the 
entire phylum. 
STATION AND HABITS OF THE MOLLUSCA 
The word “station” is used to indicate the nature of the sur- 
roundings which an animal chooses as most suited to his well- 
being. Some groups of mollusks, like the littorinas, the trochids, 
the purpuras, and the majority of those having patelliform shells, 
generally live on rocks above low-tide mark; other genera, like 
Buccinum, Sipho, and Chrysodomus, prefer eoaky or gravelly ground 
below low-tide mark. Other mollusks burrow deep in the mud, 
many prefer sandy bottoms, while a host of other species sesk 
homes upon the tangled masses of seaweed, living like arboreal 
creatures in the submarine forests. Nearly every conceivable 
character of sea-bottom or shore-line between tides harbors its 
own peculiar types of molluscan life. There are some very curious 
genera of bivalves that bore their way into the hardest rock and 
