144 



MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



consequences. When in Florida he shot a very large rattle- 

 snake, and decided to take its head only, in order to examine 

 its dentition. He opened its mouth with a stick, and saw it had 

 tremendous fangs, and proceeded to tie it up in a hand- 

 kerchief, and while doing so supposes he must have touched a 

 nerve in the cut part, for the mouth suddenly snapped, and a 

 fang pierced his thumb. He instantly put a ligature round 

 the base of the thumb, got a friend who was with him to lance 

 it deeply with a penknife, and sucked it for some time. On 

 taking off the ligature an hour afterwards, the arm swelled as 

 well as the side of his body, and he suffered great pain. He 

 applied water constantly, drank a good deal of whisky, and 

 kept quiet for some days ; but the thumb suppurated, and 

 half the bone of the terminal joint came away. Then it 

 healed, but the thumb was reduced to about half its normal 

 size, with a correspondingly small nail ; but it is quite 

 serviceable, and being so small is for many purposes more 

 useful than the other ! 



Mr. Dury had a very fine collection of land and fresh- 

 water shells from all parts of the States, and I spent one 

 morning looking over them. They were exceedingly numer- 

 ous, and of curious forms, many having strange contortions 

 of the lips, supposed to be for the purpose of protection 

 against the smaller birds, ants, etc. The freshwater shells 

 — mostly mussels (Unionidae) — were wonderfully fine and 

 varied, some curiously tubercled, some with ribs, others with 

 long spines. They are also often finely coloured inside — 

 white, pink, yellow, or orange — while in many of the species 

 there is a variation of form in the two sexes. Altogether 

 it was a most interesting collection. Mr. Dury told me he 

 began collecting when a boy, owing to a gentleman offering 

 him a few cents for every different kind of shell he could 

 find, however small, and he was thus led to search for them, 

 and to notice their forms and colours, and was surprised to 

 find how many different kinds there were, even within a 

 walk of his own home. He was thus induced to become a 

 professional collector. There are about two hundred and 

 fifty species of land-shells in temperate North America, 



