LORQUINIA 
Published by the Lorquin Natural History Club 
(Organized— August 1913) 
Volume 1 
Number 10 
Los Angeles, CaL, May 1917 
Subscription 
$1 Per Year 
RANDOM NOTES ON THE COLLECTION AND PRESER- 
VATION OF CHITONS 
By S. Stillman Berry, Redlands, California. 
Although perhaps the brief notes here offered contain nothing 
which is absolutely new, I have received in correspondence so many 
more requests for some outline of method for the care of chitons in 
the field than I could reply to in the proper sort of detail that the 
preparation of a brief article on the subject for general circulation 
has been the logical result. I should mention in passing that except 
for one or two species taken in the Mediterranean my only experience 
in collecting these animals has been along the Pacific Coast of North 
America, but I have no reason to doubt that the same methods which 
experience has shown to be ada])ted to the conditions in this region 
would be equally successful elsewhere. 
Although so remarkably a homogeneous group in outward form, 
the various species, or sometimes groups of species, of Polyplacophora 
show a surprising specificity in habit, and each is rarely, if ever, 
found outside its own Dcculiar station. Some species and even gen- 
era, for instance, are found m the hollows of rough boulders in the 
mid-tide area, others aft'ect the shallow pools which on a rocky shore 
become accessible long before the tide has reached its ebb, others 
occur on jutting headlands among the mussels, many only under 
rocks or in their deepest crevices. One species alone {Cryptochiton) 
I have noted to occur at times upon sandy beaches. Some .specie- 
are to be obtained only by drec^girg, and even then seem to inhabit 
only restricted areas, as in Monterey Bay, where I have found sev- 
eral forms nowhere outside a certain bank of hard blue clay, its 
jutting crags often covered by an incrusting sponge of a purple red 
color very similar to that of several of the chitons which are generally 
abundant on such fragments as are broken off and brought up by the 
dredge. Some species are found only at the lowest tides or dredged, 
— the zone of others is left behind in the retreat of even a morlerate 
tide. If the collector wishes a complete representation of the fauna, 
he must give practically every type of situation a thorough search. 
In general I think it may be said, at least on our coast, that the 
most favorable area for chitons is from the low-tide line to perhaps 
