HABITS OF LIMA TENERA. 475 



are everted and covered with vibratile cilia, thus 

 enabling the little creatures for a time to roam freely 

 about in search of a locality adapted to their habits. 



Nearly related to the Scallop is a very beautiful 

 bivalve, the Lima tenera, remarkable not only on 

 account of the elegance of its appearance, but from 

 the circumstance that it builds for itself a nest, or 

 rather bower, of which the Rev. David Landsborough 

 gives an interesting description. The Lima differs 

 from the Scallop in the circumstance that its fragile 

 shell does not nearly cover the mollusk the most 

 delicate part of which, a beautiful orange fringe-work, 

 is altogether external. {( Had it no additional pro- 

 tection, the half- exposed animal would be a tempt- 

 ing mouthful, quite a bonne bouche to some prowling 

 haddock or whiting ; but ' He who tempers the wind 

 to the shorn lamb/ teaches this little creature, which 

 He has so elegantly formed, curious arts of self-pre- 

 servation. It is not contented with hiding itself 

 among the loose coral, for the first rude wave might 

 lay it naked and bare : it becomes a marine mason, 

 and builds a house, or nest : it chooses to dwell in 

 a coral grotto ; but, in constructing this grotto, it 

 shows that it is not only a mason, but a rope- spinner, 

 and a tapestry-weaver, and a plasterer. Were it 

 only a mason, it would be no easy matter to cause 

 the polymorphous coral to cohere. Cordage, then, is 

 necessary to bind together the angular fragments, and 

 this cordage it spins ; but how it spins it, is one of the 

 secrets of the deep. By some means or another, though 

 it has no hand, it contrives to intertwine this yarn 

 among the numerous bits of coral, so as firmly to bind 



