AND, fluviate, or marine molluscous, or shell-bearing animals, are more or less restricted in their habitat, and these restrictions are sometimes defined by sharp lines of demarcation, resulting from topographical peculiarities which also form the boundary lines of floral regions. Hence, the dividing lines between the floras of adjacent regions often correspond with those dividing the different species and genera of shells, although in both cases there are species common to more than one region, and others which overlap and intermingle.

The California coast is divided into several areas of distribution, which collectively form a region inhabited by a molluscan fauna very distinct from any other portion of the American region.

Punta de la Concepcion is one of the most distinctly marked of any of the dividing lines for littoral species, it being the southern limit of some, and the northern limit

of other species and varieties, especially separating the northern fauna, which extends to the Arctic region, from the semitropical and tropical which extends along the shores of Southern California, Mexico, Central and a portion of South America. These regions are subdivided, and the subdivisions restrict some species, while others extend their habitat along the entire western shores of the two continents, and are also found on the distant shores of Japan.

Santa Barbara channel, especially when considered as including the channel between Santa Catalina island and the shores of the mainland from San Pedro to Point Concepcion, forms a distinct sub-region, in which a number of shells are found not known to exist elsewhere, and there are doubtless others not yet discovered, whose habitat is restricted by the same lines.

In the plate of illustrations some of the most characteristic species of the subregion are represented.

The large bivalve in the center of the upper group is a Liocardium elatum, one of

the shells common to our shores and those of Japan.

The next on the left is one which is found in deep water in the channel, brought up by dredging; it is named Siphonalia Kellettii.

Next to it is Luponia spadicea, a handsome species of the cowrie family, which inhabits the channel, and is occasionally found on the beach between tides.

Next to it is a serpent-shaped shell with a scientific name to correspond, Serpulorbis squamigerus.

On the right of the first described shell is a beautifully marked pecten or scallop shell, and on the extreme right another and larger species. These shells have a strange method of locomotion. By suddenly closing the open valves of their shell the pressure causes them to dart backwards through the water, the hinge-line of the shell acting like the stem, or cutwater, of a boat or vessel.

The shell immediately under the large scallop is Hinnites giganteus, which in the early period of its life is so nearly like the scallop that it is difficult to distinguish them apart. At this time it roams about, but after attaining a size of about one inch in diameter it settles down in life by attaching itself to a rock or other stationary object,

and has no further power of locomotion. The next is a handsome limpet-like shell with an opening at the apex.

Next to it is a very interesting "RockBorer," not only from its extraordinary size, the specimen represented measuring over seven inches in length,- but also from its habit of building a "chimney" on the upper end of its shell, through which it feeds and breathes.

The large "Bubble Shell" comes next. It inhabits the brackish water of esteros and salt-marshes. And on the left Chorus Belcheri, a Spiny Rock Shell, one of the species of a genus found only in California. and Japan.

Next to it a Ranella or Frog Shell. The animal is one of the voracious scavengers of the sea. And lastly, a delicate bivalve shell, one of the many different species and genera to which the common term "Clam" is applied.

But as any attempt to describe even a small proportion of the many hundreds of interesting inhabitants of "our mother, the sea" along our coast will be unsatisfactory, I will refer those who are interested in the subject to the living specimens, the collection of which supplies a never-ending source of pleasure and study.

Tehipite Dome

ATE one afternoon in the summer of 1869, as the tale was told me, Frank Dusy of Fresno, sheepraiser, hunter, and mountaineer, wounded a grizzly in the trackless Sierra forest. He was already many miles east of his camp on the North fork of King's river, and the bear, sorely hurt but with plenty of life still in him, lumbered rapidly along still further east, making down a creek (Crown creek, as it was subsequently named), which soon began cutting a deep cañon. With never a thought but of his game, Dusy sprang after the wounded animal, helter

skelter, now on one side of the stream, now on the other, over slippery granite and through brush and brake, till suddenly over a thirty foot cliff the bear disappeared, disappeared, had rolled, evidently, -and dead or alive, seemed to have escaped the hunter. But Dusy took a certain pride in grizzly killing in those days, if we are to believe the stories told of his prowess, and he hung his shoes about his neck, walked along a smooth ledge, and then slid to the precipice edge and into the arms of a giant oak, down which he climbed to the base of the cliff.

The quarry had picked himself up and gone on, and on followed his Nemesis a mile far