AN ANCIENT SPINNER.
In the ‘good old days’ before the invention of the spinning-jenny and the steam-engine, when working-men were slaves, and the rich had not the luxuries they have now, spinning was the work of the mistress of the house. Many good stories begin with an account of a fair maiden at a spinning-wheel, and a very ancient rhyme refers to the days ‘when Adam delved and Eve span.’ When a young lady was growing of a marriageable age, in the days of the spinning-wheel, she made preparation for her nuptials by spinning the material for sheets, tablecloths, napkins, and all manner of household necessaries; hence she was called a ‘spinster.’
Words change in their meanings with the changing fashions of a changeful world. There is one class of spinners, however, to which the whir of the loom and the steam-engine has made but little difference. ‘Men may come, and men may go, but they go on for ever.’ All the changes of our complex civilisation make but little difference to these little spinners. They live in their dark little houses; spin their threads; live their lives; die in peace, or else get eaten up, and pass off the scene, making no fuss, seeking no honour. Some people call them mussels; scientific naturalists call them Mytilus edulis. They deserve a good name, for they are an ancient and honourable family, that have fought a good fight in the fierce battle of life, and have endured through long ages, while many others have perished.
Every one who has visited the seashore must have noticed at times a little mussel forming the centre of a tangled mass of threads, shells, stones, and all sorts of fragments. These are bound together by the labour of the black-shelled spinster. Instead of anchoring to a rock, as a well-behaved little mussel ought to have done, this one has gone off and anchored to all sorts of rubbish, and been driven and tossed by the waves of the sea in all directions, until it has formed the centre of the tangled mass we find on the beach. In the natural way, a mussel settles between high and low water mark. When covered by the tide, he opens his doors, and angles for a living with his wonderful fishing-apparatus, for the spinsters of the sea are all born fishermen. When the tide is going out, the little angler closes the valves of his house as tight as a steel safe, and keeps his mouth shut, with a lot of water inside, until the tide covers him again.
How the Frenchmen have learned the habits of this well-known little spinner, and cultivated him, and made of him a cheap and nutritious article of diet for the French nation, is fairly well known. How the little fellow builds his house and weaves his ropes, is not quite so well known. The house itself, with its black outside, and the beautiful sky-blue, pearly inside, is a work of the greatest skill, while the mechanism by which it is opened and closed forms a chapter in the world’s wonder-lore. The little spinner lives in a soft, fleshy ‘mantle,’ inside of his stony house. On the edge of this mantle are tiny fingers (cilia) and little pigment cells with which he builds. The material—carbonate of lime—is extracted from the clear sea-water by a simple process in the life of the animal. Just as our food goes to form blood and bone, muscle and sinew, so does the food of the little spinner go to form his delicate tissues and his hard shelly house. The mussel-house is as much a part of the mussel’s life as our homes are part of our lives, and the processes of building are not so very different either; both are simple, both are mysterious.
To watch this little spinner make his thread is very interesting. From one side of his house protrudes a curious little pad of flesh, a quaint, pointed sort of a tab. This is called his ‘foot,’ though it might just as well have been called his hand. He touches the rock, or whatever he desires to attach himself to, with this foot, then withdraws it, leaving a tiny thread, which he has made by some mystic process, in his own body, just as a spider makes her silken cord. The foot comes out again and again, always leaving a thread, until a strong rope is woven, which binds him securely to his chosen home. He can shorten or lengthen this cable by a simple contractile motion, which allows him a little play; but he may be said to be fixed for life, once he settles down. After a severe storm, some of them will generally be found on the shore, driven from their moorings, helpless and homeless on the strand; but they can stand the storm as well as the ships of more skilful people, and their disasters at sea are probably less numerous in proportion than ours are.
I had one little fellow in an aquarium, who had been gathered from a spot where the tide left him for a long period every day. He did not care to be under water all the time, so, by the aid of his foot and his wonderful home-made thread, he climbed up the glass to the surface of the water. There he attached some threads above water to the glass, leaving some below. When the little spinner felt like having a breath of fresh air, he ‘hauled in’ on his upper guys, and rose above the surface. When tired of that, he ‘slacked off,’ and took a turn underneath, thus making something like his accustomed tidal habit.
Watching these little animals in their daily movements, one grows to have a fellow-feeling for them. Some of their actions seem almost human, and they form a part of the household, just as the cat, the dog, or the canary. One day a conscienceless sea-pirate known as a dog-whelk settled on this little spinner, and began to bore through his shell with murderous intent. The whelk was taken off, and removed to another part of the aquarium. On the morrow, he had found his way back and settled down again on the innocent little victim, so he was sentenced to death as a murderer, and paid the penalty with his life.
This mussel has inherited the spinning business from a long line of ancestors; for when the coal-forests bloomed where the iron furnaces now roar, in the ‘Black Country’ of England, the forefathers of our little spinner were inhabitants of the fresh-water pools in the carboniferous forests. Ages have come and gone since then; the stony remainders of the ancient spinners are dug from out the deepest coal-mines, but the clever little fellows still spin their simple threads along our shores as of old. We sometimes weave their threads into gloves and hose, as a matter of curiosity; but few ever seem to have time to listen to the wonderful story that can be told to listening ears by this Ancient Spinner.