As the 'case' of this animal is flexible, and as its owner will only thrive in an upright position, the reader will easily conceive that to afford the Annelid suitable accommodation in the aquarium is not a very easy task. What other naturalists do I cannot tell; but the following is the plan I adopt for the creature's comfort and my own gratification:—
Having procured a small cylinder of glass (or gutta-percha), close up one end, and drop in the Amphitrite, taking care to first tie the lower portion of its sheath with a piece of thread or silk. It is very pretty to see the plume of the Annelid spreading completely over and covering the extremity of the tube, giving the idea in the one instance that the animal was mysteriously gifted with the power of exuding gutta-percha instead of its usual mucus.
The Annelid may be made to recline against the sides of the vase, or be propped up on any chosen spot by aid of a small cairn of pebbles, and thus form a very curious feature in the aquarium.
To test a fact, relative to the power which the Amphitrite is said to possess, in common with other tubiculous Annelids, of renewing certain portions of its body after sustaining injury, I snipped off the principal portions of its branchiæ, and found that, after the lapse of a few months, my specimen renewed its mutilated organs.
[CHAPTER XI.]
The Common Mussel.
'Travelling is not good for us; we travel so seldom. How much more dignified
leisure hath a Mussel glued to his impassable rocky limit two inches
square! He hears the tide roll over him, backwards and forwards,
twice a day (as the Salisbury coach goes and returns in eight and forty
hours), but knows better than to take an outside place on the top on't.
He is the owl of the sea, Minerva's fish, the fish of wisdom.'
C. Lamb to B. Barton.