Largely dependent on moisture, the young snails that are hatched in midsummer at once seek retreats, and may be looked for under leaves, logs, and loose stones in the woods and pastures. Most American snails are solitary, and will be found lurking in the moss beside mountain brooklets—a favorite spot for the glassy vitrinas—hiding in the crevices of rocky banks and old walls, crawling at the edge of swampy pools, creeping in and out of the crannies of bark on aged trees, or clinging to the underside of succulent leaves. Some forms, very beautiful in their ornamentation when magnified, are so minute that they might be encircled by the letter o in this type, yet you will soon come to perceive them amid the grains of mud adhering to the undersurface of a soaked chip or rotten log.
For fresh-water species various resorts are to be searched. Go to the torrents with rocky bottoms for the paludinas and periwinkles (Melania); to quiet brooks for physas and coil shells (Planorbis); for limneas to the reeking swamps and weedy ponds. By pulling up the weeds gently, you may get small species that otherwise easily escape your dipper or net. In the Southern States and in the tropics certain forms are to be picked off bushes and mangrove trees like fruit, especially the round "apple snails" (Ampullaria) as big as your fist.
SEA SHELLS IN NATURE AND ART
Other familiar forms of gastropods are the limpets, keyhole and half-deck; the abalones, so much used in the making of ornaments; and the many small sorts of "periwinkles" studding the rocks and hiding among the seaweeds of every coast. Then there are the pyramidal top shells (Trochus), the bulging, wide-mouthed turbans (Turbo), and the open-whorled wentletraps (Scalaria) which years ago were so rare that collectors paid $100 or more for a good specimen. The two former kinds are on sale in all seaside shops, with the natural rough brown exterior ground away until they gleam outside in the prismatic glory of the nacre layers that lie underneath. A group of heavy shells of carnivorous tropical mollusks furnishes ornaments for the mantelshelf also. These include the knobby volutes, often richly colored in marbled patterns or in spiral rows of round spots; the olives, whose ovate shells are sometimes dark purple, sometimes beautifully marked, and always glossy, because enfolded during life inside flaps of the mantle that completely protect them; the miters, that take their name from their resemblance in shape to the headdress of a bishop, and show splendid decorations in tints of red and orange; and the strong, spiny murexes, a small Mediterranean species, which is the principal source from which the ancients derived their Tyrian purple dye—a coloring matter yielded by treatment of the blood of many species, including one of the commonest little mollusks (Purpura) on our own coast, which old-fashioned New Englanders yet utilize sometimes for making an indelible ink for marking clothing. To this family belong the "drills" that destroy thousands of dollars worth of oysters annually in Long Island Sound by boring through them. Near relatives are the whelks (Buccinum), extensively eaten in England; and two of the largest and commonest shells on our eastern sand beaches, known to northern fishermen as "winkles" and along the southern coast as "conchs." These (Fulgur and Sycotyphus) are big, pear-shaped creatures with chalky white shells that crawl about near shore, seizing and devouring anything they can overcome, and working havoc on planted oyster beds; they deposit their eggs in parchmentlike capsules shaped like gun wads and connected into a long chain that are often thrown up on the beach, where they are called sea necklaces.
Of great beauty in their rich variety of color and pattern are the tropical cone shells, of which a large number of species are known, some so rare as to bring great prices in the conchological market. Their bite is poisonous. Equally numerous in species are the charmingly decorated auger shells, some (Pleurotoma) spindle-shaped, others (Terebra) that would serve as models for a church spire. Near them is classified that white mollusk (Natica) whose globular shell is perhaps the commonest relic of the sea seen on our northern beaches, and sometimes is as large as a man's fist; to it belong the curious "sand saucers" to be found in August, which contain its eggs. These naticas are predatory, and burrowing their way through the loose sand come upon and devour other shellfish, boring a circular, nicely countersunk hole through their armor and feeding on its inmate; their depredations on the northern oyster beds are a serious matter.
Well known and always admired are the cowries, smooth, brightly colored shells, shaped like an olive with a gash down the length of one side. This long and narrow aperture is usually toothed, and it is only in the young that any indication of a typical spiral growth is discernible. The money cowrie of Africa is small and cream-white.
Lastly a word must be said about the largest of known gastropods, the big "conchs" or wing shells (Strombus), the helmet shells (Cassis), and the tuns (Dolium). They are West Indian. The species most commonly seen in the United States, forming a border for flower beds in seaside villages, is Strombus gigas, with a delicate orange-red or pink interior, from which are cut most of the shell cameos offered to art lovers. This shell, like the great spiral triton of the South Seas, is also converted into a horn much used in foggy weather by the spongers and small coasters of Floridian and West Indian waters. The helmet shell, a heavy, rounder and smoother mollusk than the Strombus, is also extensively used in cameo cutting, especially the African black helmet, in which a white outer layer covers an almost black underlayer on the broad lip. Dolium has a large, globose but thin shell, ornamented with revolving ribs.
The class Scaphopoda is composed of a single family (Dentalidæ) known as tusk shells, because the little shells, one to two inches long, are shaped like an elephant's tusk, open at both ends. The structure of the occupant is so singular, the animal lacking head, heart, gills, and some other ordinary features, that naturalists believe it is a hopeless degenerate. One of the species of the Pacific coast is famous as the shell strung as ornaments and serving practically as money among the northwestern Indians until very recent times, under the name "hiqua."
NAUTILUS, DEVILFISH, AND SQUID
We have now arrived at the last and highest division of the Mollusca—the Cephalopoda, the class of the nautilus, ammonite, and other fossil forms, and of the squid, cuttles, and octopuses of our modern seas. The cephalopods are very different in shape, activity, and in their higher organization and intelligence, from other mollusks, but their general anatomy is the same. The special characteristic, as indicated by the name, is the fact that the head is surrounded by tentaclelike extensions of the "foot," which is here fused in part with the head, and divided into the long "foot arms," which are the instruments by which these predatory creatures obtain their prey. The underpart of the foot forms a tube called the funnel (or siphon). Through the funnel the animal expels water from the mantle cavity, and thus propels itself through the water. When the siphon is in its normal position the animal swims backward; but it can be turned back over the edge of the mantle, giving a forward movement. In cephalopods the sexes are separate, the male being often much smaller than the female. The eggs are usually laid in gelatinous capsules, commonly known in New England as "sea grapes," and the development is direct, that is, without any free-swimming larval stage.