a Shells 
oe New Zealand 
Plate IV 
No. 16 
The Struthiolaria papulosa is very common, and is 
found throughout New Zealand. Mount Maunganui. 
STRUTHIOLARIA VERMIS (siruthio, an ostrich; 
vermis, a worm).—This somewhat rare shell is of an 
orange-brown colour and rather smaller in size, but other- 
wise of similar shape to the foregoing species. There are 
no nodules; the incremental lines, or lines of growth, are 
well defined, and the distinguishing feature is a deep and 
well-marked groove at the suture, which may, to the 
imaginative mind, suggest the track of a worm. In the 
event of your finding one of these shells without the thick- 
ened ring round the aperture, with the free edge of the 
outer lip unbroken and corresponding in outline with the 
preceding growth lines, you will know the shell to be that 
of a young animal, an exception to the general rule that 
most of the other varieties of shellfish have a completely- 
finished shell at every period of life. Why the Struthio- 
larias should differ from the others in this respect one 
cannot say. We can only surmise that it is a proof that 
organic differences are evolved from simpler forms, and 
mentality is a matter of evolution, just as physical or 
organic differences are evolved from simpler forms, and 
that here we have an instance of the dawn of reason, the 
germ of forethought mutely expressed by a creature to 
which we allow a limited faculty, we call instinct, and 
grudgingly of that. Can we not imagine the tiny speck 
of incipient brain communing within itself as to why it 
should go to the trouble of building an elaborate doorway 
to its home when it would only have to be removed the 
following Spring, or whenever building operations are re- 
sumed? For my part, I have little patience with the 
followers of Rousseau, who wonder “whether birds con- 
fabulate or no.” While Pope and his well-known growl- 
ing swine can only raise a smile in our most tolerant moods, 
we cannot fail to be impressed by the noble and majestic 
thoughts of Milton, when Raphael, conversing with Adam 
in the Paradise not yet lost, says of the animals :— 
Know’st thou not 
Their language and their ways? 
They also know and reason not contemptibly.” 
As Darwin speaks of the cuttlefish “having consider- 
able mental powers,” we cannot be far wrong in attribut- 
ing similar endowments to a humbler member of the same 
great tribe of mollusca. 
The Struthiolaria vermis is found in Auckland Har- 
bour; Manawatu; Tasman Bay; Mount Maunganui; 
Queen Charlotte Sound. 
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