United States or Sierra Leone ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
She is well-advised to start work early and to be on neighbourly terms with the Osmia when the latter is building; in fact, we shall soon see the terrible dangers to which that same proximity exposes her dilatory rival in resin-work, Anthidium bellicosum. The shell adopted in the great majority of cases is that of the Common Snail, Helix aspersa.
In the common catarrhine ancestors of the anthropoids and man the degeneration set in with the folding together of the pinna. This brought about the helix of the ear, in which we find the significant angle which represents the relic of the salient point of the ear in our earlier simian ancestors.
The usual game is a small Snail hardly the size of a cherry, such as, for instance, Helix variabilis, DRAP., who, in the hot weather, collects in clusters on the stiff stubble and on other long, dry stalks, by the roadside, and there remains motionless, in profound meditation, throughout the scorching summer days.
These layers are sometimes brecciated and re-cemented, as if they had been broken by the slipping of the sand when soft. I did not find a single fragment of a sea-shell; but bleached shells of the Helix melo, an existing land species, abound in all the strata; and I likewise found another Helix, and the case of an Oniscus.
When the diameter is suitable, the last whorl is occupied up to the orifice, where the final lid appears, absolutely exposed to view. This is the case with the adult Helix nemoralis and H. caespitum, and also with the young Common Snail. We will not linger at present over this peculiarity, the importance of which will become manifest shortly.
This is how things happen: a Snail has been rendered insensible by the Glow-worm. The operator is nearly always alone, even when the prize is a large one, like the Common Snail, Helix aspersa. Soon a number of guests hasten up two, three or more and, without any quarrel with real proprietor, all alike fall to.
This time, the Resin-bee is settled in Helix algira, the most remarkable of our land-shells because of the width and regularity of its spiral, which is copied from that of the Ammonites. This magnificent nest, a perfect specimen of both the Snail's work and the Bee's, deserves description before any other. At this inconsiderable depth, a partition is clearly seen.
But, as soon as the current sent through the cable reaches the spirals of the bobbin, through the conductors, y y', the sum of the elementary electrodynamic actions that arise causes the helix to revolve to the right or left, according to the polarity of the current, while at the same time the helix slightly approaches one or the other of the poles of the magnet.
For the first time I plucked the Convolvulus soldanella, which trails along the high-water mark its ropes of glossy green leaves and its great pink bellflowers. Withdrawn into his white, flat, heavily-keeled shell, a curious Snail, Helix explanata, was slumbering, in groups, on the bent grasses.
One of them is a Succinea, identical with a species now living abundantly on the island; the two others, namely, Cochlogena fossilis and Helix biplicata, are not known in a recent state: the latter species was also found in another and different locality, associated with a species of Cochlogena which is undoubtedly extinct.
Word Of The Day