BARBADOS-ANTIGUA EXPEDITION 95 
itself in the soft earth of cultivated gardens or flower beds, 
along the base of walls,—especially in corners, or under hedges. 
When. so buried only a bit of the pinkish tip shows above the 
ground. During the rainy season the big fellows ‘‘fare forth’’ 
and are a common and familiar sight. Many of them are 
erushed under the wheels of vehicles. Like all the members of 
this South American genus, this snail lays eggs that can only 
be described as enormous when judged by usual molluscan 
standards. These eggs,—or the remains of their white calcareous 
shells—are noticeable on the ground of most gardens through- 
out the island. Much less abundantly than the last we took in 
Bridgetown an Oxystyla which has been referred to the com- 
mon Antillean O. undatus jamaicensis Pils. Our specimens 
with their fine narrow longitudinal stripes and deep 
brown columellar area seem more nearly related to a South 
American group. No descendants of the Jamaican specimens 
that Colonel Fielding liberated on Pelican Island in 1889 remain 
to-day. Another South American importation that we encount- 
ered, though rather sparingly, among the deeply weathered lime- 
stone rocks is Streptaxis deformis Fer. This curiously mis- 
shapen little shell suggests having been moulded of some plastic 
material and left out to dry and harden in the sun but unable 
to support the weight of its own upper whorls it sagged over 
and finally hardened or “‘‘set’’ in distorted shape. They are 
predaceous carnivorous mollusks that probably subsist largely 
upon other more peaceful mollusks. A more truly Antillean 
element in the fauna is reflected in the Pleurodonte (Caprinus) 
isabella Fer. which is the characteristic Barbadian species of 
this Lesser Antillean subgenus. We constantly found dead 
and worn specimens and had quite given up hope of ever tak- 
ing the snail alive when one day in a damp ravine of the Scot- 
land District while examining dead leaves of the bread-fruit 
tree we found quantities of them thus hidden for their period 
of estivation. The shell is very handsome, of a dark mahog- 
any or chocolate color. It was always a pleasure to collect. We 
later found many fine specimens in the patch of ancient forest 
_-—the last remaining primitive forest— in the island. It was 
there also that we found in abundance upon the trunks of a 
smooth-bark tree the very pretty little Helicina fasciata sub- 
