Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/64

52, and look like little peaked nightcaps. One is the cup-and-saucer limpet, and indeed it might easily serve as such, on the table of some water sprite. It is glistening brown in color and looks like porcelain. The slipper limpets or boat shells are very-pretty, being shaped like little rowboats with one seat. The shallow-water boats are flat-bottomed and thin, while the deepwater ones are much stouter and round-bottomed. Limpets each have a particular spot on the rock to which they attach themselves, and when they wander off between the tides for their dinners of seaweed they always return to the same spot. If you should try to pull a limpet off of his stone you would find it very hard work, for his strong foot sucks the rock with great force, and as soon as he felt you pulling or prying he would redouble his energies to cling to his home and would probably succeed.

A king among shells is the Haliotis, or, as the Spaniards call it, abalone. It is found in all collections, and is extensively used for its pearly lining in the manufacture of buttons, buckles, and other ornaments. It is sometimes called the ear shell, on account



of its resemblance to the outline of the human ear. In life the animal thrusts his tentacles out through the row of holes along the edge. On the outside the shell is rough, often closely resembling the rocks on which it lives. The animals are eaten in Europe and by the Chinese in California. While I was living in San Francisco a Chinaman went out on to the rocks at low tide to gather some. As he attempted to wrench one from its