to hang suspended, and that the threads are sometimes of considerable length. Chondropoma dentatum[1] (Key West), a shell about half an inch long, is stated by Binney to spin a short thread, and hang suspended by it during rest; and at the end of one of his chapters the author gives a small woodcut, which, though not described, evidently represents this shell, slightly enlarged, hanging by a short thread from a leaf-stalk; the thread, according to the drawing, proceeds from between the operculum and the outer lip of the shell, considerably nearer to the umbilicus than to the suture. (Fig. 5.)[2]
Another species, Chondropoma plicatalum, a little larger than the last, was obtained by Dr. J.S. Gibbons, at Puerto Cabello, hanging suspended during repose by a thread ⅓–½ in. long, very thin, but strong, flexible, and silk-like; the thread issued from between the operculum and the outer lip, two-thirds of the latter's length from the suture, a position similar to that shown in Binney's drawing.[3] Similar suspension was observed by Dr. Gibbons also in the allied Tudora megacheila. Near St. Ann's, Curaçao, on a waste piece of ground which appears to have been a kind of conchologist's paradise, he found this creature in great abundance, "suspended by its silk-like thread from Acacia boughs, or strewed thickly along the ground underneath"; the thread resembled that of Chondropoma plicatulum, but was shorter.[4]
Among Old-World Cyclostomas, we have a note relating to Cyclostoma articulatum, a shell of considerable size, belonging to Rodriguez (Mascarene Islands):—"When it retired and closed its shell," says Woodward of a specimen kept under a bell-glass, "it still adhered, and sometimes became suspended, by a
- ↑ Cyclostoma dentatum.
- ↑ Binney, 'Terrestrial Air-breathing Mollusks of the United States,' ii. (1851), pp. 347–9; and see also W. G. Binney, 'Land and Freshwater Shells of North America,' 1865, pp. 96–7, fig. 194 (Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vii.); and Tryon, 'American Journal of Conchology,' iv. (1868), p. 11; pl. xviii. fig. 15.
- ↑ Gibbons, 'Journal of Conchology.' ii. (1879), p. 134; and in Tye, 'Quarterly Journal of Conchology,' i. (1878), p. 412.
- ↑ Gibbons, 'Quarterly Journal of Conchology,' i. (1878), pp. 411–2; and Tye, l.c.
