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Then, contracting itself, it draws the scabbard towards it, half-raising it and sometimes even making it assume a vertical position. Even so do the Bulimi move along, lifting their shell as they complete each crawling step. After a couple of minutes in the free air, I replace the caddis worm in the water. This time, it floats, but like a cylinder with too much weight below.
The descent of the Ampullaria, and other fresh-water molluscs, into the mud of the tanks, has its parallel in the conduct of the Bulimi and Helices on land. The European snail, in the beginning of winter, either buries itself in the earth or withdraws to some crevice or overarching stone to await the returning vegetation of spring.
The Bulimi of Chili have been found alive in England in a box packed in cotton after an interval of two years, and the animal inhabiting a land-shell from Suez, which was attached to a tablet and deposited in the British Museum in 1846, was found in 1850 to have formed a fresh epiphragm, and on being immersed in tepid water, it emerged from its shell.
The land molluscs of the district are the only animals which aestivate; they are found in clusters, Bulimi and Helices, concealed in hollow trees, the mouths of their shells closed by a film of mucus. The fine weather breaks up often with great suddenness about the beginning of February. Violent squalls from the west or the opposite direction to the trade-wind then occur.
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