The razor is very good to eat, if its tough leathery skin is slipped off, and on some parts of the coast it is often used for food. The fishermen use it for bait, too, and catch it by means of a slender iron rod with a barbed tip, which they thrust into its body as it lies at the bottom of its burrow.
PLATE XIX
THE SABRE RAZOR (3)
There are several different kinds of Razors, and one of them is called the “sabre razor,” because its shells are curved, just like the scabbard of a sabre. It is fairly common, but you are never likely to find its burrows, unless you go to look for them just at low-water after a spring-tide, because it almost always lives below the ordinary low-water mark. But after spring-tides—which come twice in every month, once when the moon is new and once when it is full—the waves retreat much farther than they do at other times. Then, if you go right down to the water’s edge, you may often find creatures which you will never meet with higher up on the beach. And one of these is the sabre razor.
PLATE XX
THE PINNA
This is the largest of all the shell-bearing molluscs which live in our British seas, for it has been known to reach a length of nearly two feet. It is found chiefly on our southern coasts, and always lies upright, half buried in the mud at the bottom of the water, with its shells partly opened. And it always fastens itself down by a bunch of “byssus” threads, like those of the mussel, which are so strong that it takes a very hard pull indeed to tear them away from their hold.
In the British Museum you may see a pair of gloves which have been made out of the byssus threads of a pinna, and if these creatures were more plentiful their threads would no doubt be used in this way very largely indeed.
Now why do you think that the pinna always rests at the bottom of the water with its shells partly opened?