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Our Food Mollusks 



once more spins a byssus, attaching it to several sand 

 grains or pebbles in the wall of its burrow. The bur- 

 row at this time is very shallow, and there is safety in 

 thus anchoring, for a storm that might disturb the bot- 

 tom even slightly, would expose the creature. Newly 



Fig. 58. — Long neck clam, Mya, with a byssus (b) attached 

 to sand grains (sg). Drawn from living specimen, on 

 a smaller scale than Fig. 56. 



buried clams have the habit of casting the byssus off at 

 the point of its attachment to the body, of coming out 

 of the burrow and creeping for short distances, and then 

 of burrowing once more. 



Figure 58, drawn on a much smaller scale than Figure 

 56, represents a soft clam two and three-tenths milli- 



