The fecundity of these mollusca is immense. An Eolis papillosa of moderate size in one of my aquaria, deposited successively nine strings of spawn between March 20th and May 24th. The strings were exactly alike in length and arrangement; each comprised about 105 convolutions, and each convolution 200 eggs, while each egg contained on an average two embryos. Thus the astonishing number of 378,000 embryos proceeded from this one animal in about two months.

Step by step we have crept along the beach, turning stones as we went, till we are come to the great masses of sandstone rock. Here are the Purples[21] by hundreds, with their strong massive shells, some of them pure[Pg 46] white, which, however, becomes dingy with age, some banded with brown, and some, especially the young and half-grown ones, painted with a dull but soft purplish hue. The older specimens have the inner surface of the l. . . Read More