DENTALIID A. 113 
of living individuals, soon destroy them. Lacaze-Duthiers 
observed a current of water passing through the shell from the 
opening at the smaller end. He discovered the Dentalium at 
low-water mark, where its presence was betrayed by a small 
groove in the sand; and heseems to have got a knack of finding 
them, for he says he easily procured 200 live specimens at the 
recess of a single high spring-tide. They prefer certain spots, 
especially patches of coarse sand mixed with broken shells and 
interspersed with Zostera. The Dentalium is hardy, and appar- 
ently abstemious. Lacaze-Duthiers kept some alive in a flask of 
sea-water with a little sand for more than eighteen months. It 
is much more active at night, and sensible of light. <A ray of 
the sun or the fiame of a candle will cause it to withdraw its 
foot. This organ acts as a piston in expelling at the other end 
the eggs and seminal fluid, as well as, perhaps, the feces and 
exhausted water. The point of the young shell is pear-shaped, 
and bears some resemblance to a baby’s feeding-bottle with the 
hole at one end instead of in the middle. It is broken off when 
too small to contain the terminal tube or process of the mantle; 
and this part of the shell is continually rubbed away as the 
animal increases in size, until at last it becomes truncated, and 
a Short pipe is formed with an oblique slit in front to accommo- 
date the terminal tube. The slit is extended in certain species, 
although this distinctive character is confined to adult specimens. 
The inside of the shell is white as porcelain, and brilliant as 
varnish. The epidermis is slight and easily abrades. The micro- 
scopic structure of the shell is scarcely different from that of 
Patella. It is most complicated, being composed in a great 
measure of prisms, interlacing fibre, and anastomosing canals— 
not of cellular elements. The quantity of animal matter which 
it contains is next to nothing. 
“Mr. Lord says that these shells were employed as money by 
the Indians of Northwest America before the introduction, by 
the Hudson’s Bay Company, of blankets, which to a great extent 
superseded the tooth-shells as a medium of purchase. ‘A slave, 
a canoe, or a Squaw, is worth in these days so many blankets; 
but it used to be so many strings of Dentalia.’ The value ofa 
Dentalium depends upon its leneth. Twenty-five long shells, 
strung together end to end, make a fathom, and are called a 
‘Hi-qua.’ At one time such a string would have been worth 
about £50 sterling. The shells inhabit the soft sand, in the snug 
bays and harbors that abound along the west coast of Van- 
couver’s Island, at a depth of from 8 to 5 feet. The habit of the 
Dentalium is to bury itself in the sand, one end of the shell being 
invariably downwards, and the other end close to the surface. 
‘This position the wily savage turns to good account, and has 
adopted a most ingenious mode of capturing the much-prized 
