161 'The Violet Snails I cannot draw from my own experience a vivid picture of a stranded school of violet snails, but I here quote Mr. Charles T. Simpson's letter to the Nautilus, April, 1897: I had collected for many years and in many countries, but had never found, perhaps, more than a dozen dead or broken shells. In January, 1883, I was on a schooner bound for Spanish Honduras, and we stopped at Key West, where I spent one of the most delightful weeks of my life gathering Cylindrellas, Chondro pomas, Cerions and the beautiful Orthalicus, Liguus and Bulimulus multilineatus in the thick, thorny tropical scrub. We were to sail at noon on Sunday, but I could not resist the temptation to take one last look at the beach. So after breakfast I wandered out.
Before I came to the beach I noticed that as far as the eye could see it was a mass of the most intense, glowing violet colour, and on coming up to it I was astonished to find that this colour came from untold millions of Ianthinas which had been washed up during the night, for when I left the beach the evening before at dusk not one was to be seen. To say that they lined the shore gives no idea of the truth. Everywhere, from below low water to highest tide mark they were piled up, in most places, over shoe-top deep, and in the hollows of the rocks one could have waded in among them up to his knees. Shell, animal and float were all a vivid purple, the richness of which soon fades in dead shells and preserved specimens.
There had been no storm, nothing but an ordinary breeze up from the south, and it is probable that an immense school had been drifting along, and where they struck the island some five miles in length, every one in that distance was stranded.
I had brought no basket nor sack nor anything to collect in, but I could not bear to go away and leave that vast bed of trea sures without taking at least a few with me. I searched in vain for a box or tin can or piece of canvas, but I could find absolutely nothing. I took out my handkerchief, knotted the corners,
and tried to pull out the animals from the shells, but the whole mass was so slippery, and the shells so frail that the latter in variably broke. So I filled the handkerchief with shells and all, as many as it would hold. Then I took off my straw hat and filled it, and that did not satisfy me, for as I wandered along I found so many finer specimens that I began to put them into my pockets, and I did not leave the shore until every pocket was bursting full. I had on a linen coat and white duck pants. The day was hot, and it seemed to me that those I anthinas melted. In a little while streaks of glowing violet began to show down my clothes. I felt a clammy, wet, uncomfortable feeling clear through to my skin, and my shoes were filled with the purple liquid. By the time I reached the city I looked like an Indian in war paint. I have no doubt that the people of Key West, The Violet Snails who were just going to church, thought I was a lunatic, and perhaps they were not far from right. At last I reached the schooner, took off and threw away my suit, which was utterly ruined, and got my precious mollusks into sea water to soak. Although at least half of them were broken, yet when I cleaned them I had the satisfaction of counting up over two thousand good shells.
When the wind blows this little sailor ashore, on Floridian, Mediterranean or Pacific Island beach, an increasing number of interested observers gather a few uninjured specimens to watch in the aquarium jar. Better opportunity still comes to the naturalist on a voyage of discovery. While one group is busy dredging for deep sea forms of life, another in a row boat, with dip-net and tin pail, may skim the surface and collect the small but wonderful pelagic mollusks. "The blind snail of the sea" is among the most interesting of the varied ocean fauna. On shipboard or in the ordinary seaside aquarium it is quite at home.
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