TRANSPLANTATION OF BIVALVES. 57 



of the valves of the great pond-mussels {Anodonta 

 cygnea) procure them, according to Mr. Jeffreys, by 

 means of a long pointed stick, which is inserted between 

 the gaping shells. The animal closes upon the stick 

 and allows itself to be drawn up out of the water/ Pearl- 

 mussels {Unto margarztifer), as Professor Tate relates, 

 are dragged to shore by country boys in a similar man- 

 ner upon long slender rods.^ I recently experimented 

 by the Lea upon a number of A 7todontce 3.nd Unwnes, 

 most of which, I found, allowed themselves to be drawn 

 from the mud and out of the water upon inserted grass- 

 stems. A few fell almost immediately, but, of six which 

 were carried away suspended upon the grasses, four 

 (two of each genus) were still holding on when I 

 reached home after the space of an hour and a half, in- 

 cluding about ten minutes in a train ; these were then 

 suspended from a shelf, and one Anodonta (two and a half 

 inches long) still retained its hold fifty-one hours after 

 it had been taken from its habitat, and on being placed 

 in water it extended its foot and ultimately became 

 detached. The Rev. E. A. Woodruffe-Peacock tells me 

 that he used to catch hundreds of mussels in his father's 

 fish-pond in this way, drawing them to land upon stiff 

 straws, twigs, or fine wire, and the fact that the 

 creatures will allow themselves to be thus taken seems 

 to have been long known, for Sir Robert Redding, in a 

 letter dated in 1688, mentioned that the poor people in 



^ "British Conchology," i. (1862), Ixviii. 



' Tate, " Land and Fresh-water Mollusks," 1866, p. 27, and see 

 also "Science Gossip" for 1870, pp. 265-6. 



