Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/337

Rh to hang suspended, and that the threads are sometimes of considerable length. Chondropoma dentatum (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.)

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. 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.

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