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The Atoll of Funafuti, Ellice group : its zoology, botany, ethnology and general structure based on collections made by Charles Hedley of the Australian Museum, Sydney, N.S.W.

Nerita Plicata, Linne

Nerita Plicata, Linne.

Martens, op. cit., p. 63, pl. x,, figs. 6 - 10.

This species occured at Funafuti in great profusion. The wave-worn breccia of the outer beach, just above high tide, is its favourite haunt. Here a hundred may be gathered from a few square feet. Into any crevice they crawl and huddle together like a cluster of Helix aspersa when hibernating. Their tenacity is wonderful. Often when picking them out of a crevice in the coral, I have pulled away the shell and found the foot and operculum adhering to the rock, torn from the viscera left in the page 410shell. This mollusc sometimes ascends the trunks of trees in the vicinity of the beach, and behaves more like a terrestrial than a marine organism.

Martens quotes the following habitats from the Pacific:—New Guinea, Tucopia, New Caledonia, Fiji, Upolu, Samoa, Uvea, Futuna, Tongatabu, Tahiti, Borabora, Gambier, Paumotus, Marquesas, Jaluit, Marshalls, Ponape, Guam, Carolines, and the Mariannes. Material in this Museum enables me to add Erromanga, New Hebrides, and the Solomons.

At Port Moresby, British New Guinea, I was told that this mollusc is locally called "mimi," meaning "to itch," because it made the tongue of the eater sore.