1890 .] 
5 
[Annual Meeting. 
The Rev. J. T. Gulick during his residence as a missionary at the 
Sandwich Islands had an unequalled opportunity to add a new 
chapter to the history of science, and fortunately knew how to avail 
himself of this privilege. The Achatinellinae belong to a group of 
highly colored land shells, which were known to be peculiar to these 
islands, and it was also known that many species were found there 
crowded together within comparatively narrow areas, and also that 
distinct species were not necessarily or proportionately separated 
by the physical features of the localities in which they lived. Mr. 
Gulick collected largely and succeeded in bringing together a very 
perfect representation of this fauna. He greatly enlarged the num- 
ber of species known to exist, but what was far more important 
ascertained that by far the larger part of all the species were con- 
fined to the northeastern island of the group, Oahu ; and farther, 
that seven-eighths of all these, about one hundred and seventy-five 
species with several hundreds of included varieties, were found 
only upon the longest of the two mountain ranges of this island, 
the one which occupies the shore of the island on the northeastern 
side. 
Mr. Gulick has struck one of the rarest of all places, an area in 
which not only distinct species occurred in great abundance, but 
also the intermediate variations leading from one of these into 
another, so that all the gradations from one species to another 
could be studied, and also the conditions under which the animals 
lived and their habits. He has had the precious privilege, never 
before accorded to any naturalist, of actually living and studying 
a centre of evolution, and has utilized his opportunity. We can- 
not, however, but regard it as unfortunate for him and for the his- 
tory of science, that the results have been made known only in a 
series of short papers, first describing the new species and then giv- 
ing his theoretical conclusions. These publications, although they 
are extremely interesting and embrace new views which we hope 
to speak of at some future time in connection with the specimens, 
do not do justice to his observations, and are altogether inadequate 
to the importance of his discoveries. These discoveries are of 
great value in the history of the hypothesis of evolution and they 
should be explained by a complete monograph of the Achatinellinae 
with colored plates containing full illustrations of every variety 
with tables and maps showing distribution of the varieties and 
species. 
