A Year at the Shore

by Philip Henry Gosse

ITS BAD CHARACTER.

But in the days of ancient Rome the poor Sea-hare had a far more terrific reputation. In those dark days of the Empire when no one’s life was secure against insidious assassination, and when professed poisoners were at the command of such as could afford to pay their hire, this mollusk was an essential element of the fatal draught. “Locusta used it to destroy such as were inimical to Nero; it entered into the potion which she prepared for the tyrant himself; and Domitian was accused of having given it to his brother Titus. To search after the Sea-hare was to render one’s-self suspected; and when Apuleius was accused of magic, because, forsooth, he had induced a rich widow to marry him, the principal proof against him was that he had hired the fishermen to procure him this fearful animal.”[71] He succeeded, however, in showing, to the satisfaction of his judges, that his object was merely the gratification of laudable scientific curiosity.

TUSK-SHELL.

Peering into the deep and narrow fissures with which the rocky ledge is cleft, we observe some shells which properly belong to the deep sea bottom, but have been doubtless washed into the shallow, by some heavy ground-swell, and left where we now see them. Here are several fragments, and one or two nearly perfect specimens, of what looks like an elephant’s tusk in miniature, but is really the shell of a small Gastropod mollusk commonly known as the Tusk-shell.[72] In colour, form, and curvature, the resemblance is complete, but the length of a perfect shell rarely exceeds an inch and a half, with a diameter of one-eighth of an inch at the larger end. The animal is remarkable for having long been a subject of dispute with learned zoologists as to its true affinities; by some being considered as a true mollusk allied to the Limpets, by others as a worm allied to the Serpulæ. Anatomy determines it to be rightly located by the former opinion, and yet the possession of red blood, and some other peculiarities belonging to the Annelida, indicate a curious relationship with this class, so that we may consider it as one of those interesting forms which link together two great divisions of the animal kingdom.

Plate 17.
P. H. GOSSE, del. LEIGHTON, BROS.
LIGIA. TORBAY BONNET. TUSK-SHELL.

When the Tusk-shell is found alive, we rarely can see more of the soft parts than a sort of white cushion occupying the mouth of the shell, and occasionally protruding or receding, with a little conical point projecting from the centre of it. You might keep it for weeks, as I have done, and see no more, by the most assiduous watching, than this; but at some fortunate moment you might perchance see the whole foot, of which this little cone is the extremity, thrust far out of the cushion-like collar, when you would discern a wide lobed membrane, fringing the base of the foot, trumpet-like in shape, or resembling the blossom of a convolvulus, with the thick and pointed foot projecting from its centre like a pistil.

These sluggish white mollusks ordinarily live on the muddy sea-floor, or burrow in it, where they devour minuter animals, such as Foraminifera, and the spawn and larval forms of their fellow Mollusca. They are rarely taken alive at a less depth than ten fathoms.

TORBAY BONNET.