Page:Hardwicke's Science-Gossip - Volume 1.pdf/95

1, 1865.] ABOUT THE OTTER'S-SHELL.

(Lutraria maxima.)

HE Otter's-shell, or, as it is more frequently styled in the north-west, the Clam, has a somewhat wide geographical range. It is found in great abundance on the coast of Vancouver Island, as well as on the mainland fore-shore from the Bay of San Francisco to Sitka, 53° N. lat.

This mollusc attains an immense size, and to the coast Indians is most valuable as an article of diet, either fresh or dried for winter use in the smoke of the lodge-fires. There are several monster specimens in the British Museum shell-room—brought by myself from Vancouver Island—visible to all who may be curious in Clams after reading the following episode on their manners and customs.

This bivalve spends the greater part of its time buried in the mud, about two feet deep, the long syphon reaching the surface discloses his place of concealment by constantly squirting up small jets of water. The rise and fall of the tide on these coasts, often from thirty to forty feet, exposes at low water great muddy flat banks that run out sometimes over a mile from shore. Here he lives; there is nothing about him poetical or romantic—grovelling in the mud, and feeding on the veriest filth he can find, constitute the great pleasures of his life. It is almost superfluous to remark that the Otter's-shell belongs to the family Mactridæ, some of the larger ones measuring eight inches from hinge to valve; shell oblong and open at both ends, cartilage-plate prominent, two small teeth in each valve, foot large, syphons united.

As soon as the tide is off the flats, number of Indian women (squaws) may be seen hastening towards the mud-banks, guiltless of clothing, with the exception of a small bit of skin tied round the waist. They wade into the mud, a basket in one hand, and in the other a bent stick, about four feet long; and, thus equipped, commence digging up the mud-houses of the Clam, guided by the jets of water that disclose his residence. Pushing down the bent stick, and getting it well under him, they place a stone, as a fulcrum, behind the lever, against which the squaw fixes her foot firmly, then lifts away, and, as a skilful dentist whips out a tooth ere you know the instrument is near it, so the bivalve is hoisted from its mud-house, thence transformed into the Indian's basket ere he knows it. The basket filled, they trudge back again to the lodge.

And now to open him—

He is not a native that an oyster-knife is likely to astonish. The wily Red-skin, if he never heard the fable of the wind, the sun, and the traveller, practises the same principle on the luckless Clam as the sun found so effectual on the obstinate pedestrian. What force fails to do, a genial warmth accomplishes—more persuasive, perhaps, than pleasant—to induce the Clam to open his shell.

The Indians hollow out a circle in the gound, about eight inches deep, then fill it with heated stones, on which they place the bivalve martyr. The heat finds its way through his walls, and his mansion soon gets too hot to hold him: so he opens his door for a mouthful of fresh air; fully enjoying the luxury, he incautiously opens it wider and wider.

Slily watching his movements sits a squaw, grim and dirty, armed with a long sharp stick; hotter and more thirsty grows the poor Clam; gradually the shelly portals are stretched apart then down upon him the savage pounces, and astonishes his heated senses by thrusting the spear, with all her force, through the quivering tissues. His chance is over. Jerked off the heated stones, pitilessly his stronghold is forced open; ropes, hinges, fastenings, crack like thread, and the Clam is ruthlessly dragged out, naked and lifeless.

I venture to give a story, told by an old hunter (as we were wandering by the beach), of having seen a duck trapped by an Otter's-shell. And thus he told it:—

"You see I was a cruising down these flats, just dead low water as it is now, when I see a big flock of shoveller ducks busy as a dog-fish in herring-time. So down I creeps, and slap I fires in among 'em. Six on 'em turned over, and away went the rest, gallows skeert, quacking like mad, making pretty tall travelling to pick up the dead uns. I spied an old mallard a playin' up all manner o' antics, jumpin', hackin', flappin', but fast by the head tho', as if he had his nose in a steel trap.

"What do you think had fixed him? I'll be dog gone, if a big Clam hadn't nailed him fast by the beak. The mallard might a tried his darndest, but, may I never trap another martin, if the Clam wouldn't a held him agin all odds till the tide run in, and he'd a been a gone shoveller, you bet your boots?"

HE study of mosses offers two great advantages to persons whose time is much occupied in business: 1st, that the year round every month will afford numbers of new specimens—some dying off as others come into fruit: and 2ndly, that the specimens gathered can be examined at any future time, four or five years after; for, by merely placing them into a little water, they will immediately resume their life-like appearance. Having working this department of natural science for some time, I