Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/765

Rh much older nobility than any that they had brought forward—of one that was present at the creation of the world. The crown-prince, intimating that my mere assertion could not carry the day, invited me to produce a living shoot of that old stock. I told him that I would do so if I were given time, and he granted me as long an indulgence as I desired. Some years had passed since my promise was made; but now I desired to fulfill it, and had come to this place to get the living shoots of the oldest family on the earth. What I had asserted was the simple truth. The ancestors of these shells have lived in the sea ever since there was a sea, "and now I shall take these living muscles to the king and tell him that I have won the bet."

Let us look now at the little company which is collected here on a stone, and whose individual members are found in the Mediterranean Sea. The largest of the specimens on the right side of the drawing,



which has grown by a short stalk to a small coral-stem, represents a smooth shell, of glassy clearness, and hard as glass. Linnæus was acquainted with it, and called it Terebratula vitrea, or the glassy terebratula. Another much smaller kind, whose white, three-cornered shells are neatly furrowed in the direction of their length, is supposed to have a kind of resemblance which I have never been able to find, with a snake's head, and is named in the classification Terebratulina caput serpentis. Two specimens can be seen in the drawing, one in the right-hand lower corner of the stone, on the surface; the other on top near the middle, in profile. On the Sardinian coast this species wears a yellowish-green coat, which consists of a slime sticking fast to the shell with sand-grains. I thought at first that I had discovered a new species, and would be able to perpetuate my name in the zoölogical registers till the end of science, by giving it to this creature, when my zeal unluckily prompted me to take hold of the soft coat with a pincers. The tool drew off the envelope and under it shone the ivory-white shell. Besides these two species belonging to the