Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/74

64 elongate or contract at pleasure, the animals are enabled to burrow and to go "up and down stairs" with great rapidity. It requires dexterous management to capture the Razor-shell alive. When they are wanted for food or for bait, the usual plan is to shoot into the sand, alongside of a "spout," a hooked iron rod, which must be at once pulled out again obliquely, so as to fetch the shell.

A better way is to drop a little salt on its tail, or at least on its siphon-orifices. If this be done, the animal will rise partly out of its burrow—for it hates undiluted chloride of sodium—and may then be captured, if you be quick. But, if you should fail to seize the creature at the first attempt, in vain would you pour salt in the burrow; the mollusk now sees the artifice, and is not to be imposed upon a second time.

The Aspergillum, or Watering-pot Shell, derives its name from its perforated disk, which much resembles the snout of a watering-pot. This animal burrows into sand or bores into stone, wood, or thick shells.



When in its burrow, its narrow end, containing the openings of its siphon, protrudes. To the same group belongs the Flask-shell, which perforates shells of every kind, attaching them to itself by means of some natural cement. It thus often constructs around itself a casing like a flask, and hence its name.

We will close this notice of the Borers of the Sea with some account of the Mya arenaria, or Gaper-shell, which burrows into sand, and which derives its name, gaper, from the fact that its bivalve-shell gapes, to allow its long, stout tube to protrude. "It inhabits sandy and muddy shores," says Wood, "and, to an inexperienced eye, is quite invisible. The shell itself, together with the actual body of the mollusk, is hidden deeply in the mud, seldom less than three inches, and generally eleven or twelve inches from the surface. In this position it would be unable to respire were it not for the elongated tube, which projects through the mud into the water, and just permits the extremities of the siphons to show themselves, surrounded by the little radiating tentacles which betray them to the experienced shell-hunter."