drill is dark green. It has a long tail to twist round in its shell.
The drill does not live alone in a place by himself. A whole host of
them live near one another.
The very strangest thing about the drill is his tongue. It is from his
tongue that he gets his name.
Did you ever see a man use a file? With it he can cut a hole in a piece
of iron or stone. The tongue of the drill is like a file. How is this
tongue made?
It is a little soft band that will move in any way, or roll up, or push
out. In this fine band are set three rows of teeth. There are many
teeth in each row. The teeth are fine and as hard as the point of a
pin. We could not see them if we did not use the glass that you were
told of.
With this fine tongue the drill can cut or saw a hole in a thick shell.
The drill is very greedy. He eats many kinds of shell-fish. He likes
best of all to eat the oyster.
How does he go to work? He cannot break the shell of the oyster as the
conch can. No. The way he does is this.
With his tough foot he gets fast hold of the oyster-shell. He picks out
the thin, smooth spot called the eye of the shell. Then he goes to work
to file his hole. It will take him a long time.
Some say it will take him two days. But he is not lazy. He keeps fast
hold and saws away. At last the hole is made clear through the shell.
It is small, smooth, even; no man could make a neater hole. Then he
puts into the hole a long tube which is on the end of his cloak or
veil. He can suck with that, and he sucks up the oyster till the poor
thing is all gone.
LESSON XXXIX.
THE STORY OF A WAR.
When the drill gets on the back of an oyster, what can the oyster do?
Nothing. The poor oyster cannot help himself. Does he hear hour after
hour the file of the drill on his shell? Yes.
He knows the drill will get in and kill him, but all that he can do is
to keep still and wait.
The oyster is not the only kind of shell-fish that the drill eats. When
the drill goes after the poor shell-fish that have no heads, he eats
them at his ease.
They cannot help themselves. They do not know how to get away from Mr.
Drill. The shell-fish that have no heads live in shells made of two
parts, like the covers of a book. The two parts are held to each other
by a hinge.
It is a bad thing, it seems, to have no head. Without a head who can
take care of himself?
But let us see Mr. Drill try a fight with a shell-fish that has a head.
Now he meets his match!
He goes to the top of the shell. He makes fast, and begins--file,
file, file. The fish inside hears him. “O, are you there, Mr. Drill?”
What do you think the shell-fish does? He draws his body out of the
way, and builds up a nice little wall! So, when Mr. Drill gets his hole
made, and puts in his tongue--no fish, only a hard wall! Then Mr. Drill
also moves along.
He picks out a good place. Once more he goes to work--file, file, file.
“O, _here_ you are, Mr. Drill!” And the shell-fish with a head once
more pulls his body out of the way, and makes a new wall.
[Illustration: SEA-SIDE COTTAGES.]
Then Mr. Drill has the same luck as before. Sometimes he gets tired of
the war and goes off. Now and then, as he too has a head, he finds a
spot where there is no room for the wall. There he makes his hole and
sucks out the animal.
You will find very many of the shells on the sea-beach with these
pin-holes in them. The holes were made by Mr. Drill on his hunt for
food.
But you will now and then find shells, as the thick clam shell, full of
holes, like a network. This is not done by Mr. Drill.
Shells and bones are made of two kinds of stuff. One is lime, which is
hard like stone. The other is not so hard; it is more like dry glue.
These shells with so many holes are old shells, long dead, and the glue
part has gone out of them.
How did it get out? It was bored out by a kind of sponge. Only the lime
part is left, like a fine net.
When bones or shells have only the lime part left, they will break and
crack like glass. If they have too little lime, they will bend.
For all Mr. Drill has a head, he is not so wise as at first he seemed
to be.
He will sit down and make a hole in an old dead shell where no fish
lives. Now and then he makes a hole in an old shell, long ago turned
into stone. He will spend two days on such a shell as this!
Did you know that bones and shells and plants sometimes turn to stone?
You will some day learn about that strange fact.
LESSON XL.
HOW SHELL-FISH FEED.
Do the shell-fish all feed on other shell-fish? Oh, no. Some of them
live on sea-weed. Some of them live by fishing. They catch, from the
water, small bits of food, as small as grains of sand.
The shell-fish that live on sea-weed have a long, slim tongue. It is
somewhat like that of the drill. The tongue is like a tiny strap.
The teeth are set on it, three or more in a row, like the points of
pins. As the teeth wear out from work on the tough weed, more grow.
These shell-fish walk along on their one big foot. First one side of
the foot spreads out, and then the other.
That pulls them along. Is it not very slow work? But what of that? All
they have to do is to move about and find food.
They can take all day for it. They have no house to build and no
clothes to make.
They creep along to a good bed of sea-weed. Then they put out the fine,
file-like tongue.
It cuts off flakes of sea-weed for them to eat. They are never tired of
that one kind of food.
Even that queer limpet, who sits on a rock and has a shell like a cap,
has a head, and a foot, and a tongue that is like a rasp. And he can
walk along the floor of the sea.
He can climb up the rocks. The limpet has his own rock and his own hole
in the rock. He goes back to his rock when he has had all that he wants
to eat.
[Illustration: AT LOW TIDE.]
The world of the sea is as full of life as the world of the land. There
is one nice little shell-fish, about as big as a pea. He lives in the
sea-weed that grows on rocks. He is brown, or green, or black, or red,
or dark yellow.
He can live in the damp weed in the hours when the tide is out, and has
left the rocks dry. He eats sea-weed. Let us look at him. He has two
little feelers.
He has two wee, black eyes. He has a little snout, like a tiny pig. At
the end of this snout is his little mouth. His small, dark foot has a
dent in it.
He puts out his wee, file-like tongue, and laps it out and in, as a dog
does when he drinks water. The sharp teeth cut off little scales of
weed for him to eat. Take ten or more of these little shells in your
hand. Each tiny animal draws in his wee foot.
As the little animals hide in this way, put down your ear, and you will
hear a faint squeak. It is made by the air in the shells.
LESSON XLI.
REVIEW.
What is a shell-fish?
What three great orders of shell-fish are there?
Did you say there are many kinds?
Name some of the kinds.
What kind of shell do the fish with a head and a foot live in?
Tell me how these shell-fish grow.
Tell me about the conch cradles.
Where do these fish like to live?
Why do they need to wear these hard shells?
Do they change their shells?
How, then, do they grow?
Why are not more blown ashore?
Tell me what they eat.
How do they kill and eat other shell-fish?
Do all fish lay eggs?
How do shell-fish eat sea-weed?
What are shell-fish good for?
What shell-fish is most eaten?
What did the Indians make out of the shells?
Tell me about the veil, or cloak, of the shell-fish.
Tell me more about the foot.
Tell me how Mr. Drill makes war.
Of what are shells and bones made?
How is Mr. Drill’s tongue made?
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Transcriber’s note
Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized. The following
printer errors have been changed.
=CHANGED= =FROM= =TO=
Page 74: “It of a sand-color” “It is of a sand-color”