PATELLID^. — LIMPET. 177 



The women of the Andaman Islands wear various 

 ornaments, and, according to Mr. Ball, the most ex- 

 traordinary are the skulls of their defunct relatives, 

 festooned with strings of shells, which some of them 

 carry suspended from their necks.* 



Limpet shells are used for mortar. 



In the island of Herm, near Gruernsey, poultry are 

 fed on Patella vulgata ; but it is said that they will 

 not touch Patella atheletica, which is also considered 

 too tough for bait. 



Sea-birds feed on the Patella, and Mr. Gatcombe, in 

 the Field, August, 1863, mentions having once taken 

 from the gullet of an oyster-catcher upwards of thirty 

 limpets. He also adds an account of a curious occur- 

 rence which took place on the Plymouth breakwater 

 some time ago, " One of the workmen employed on the 

 breakwater observed a sandpiper fluttering in a peculiar 

 manner, and discovered, on approaching it, that it had 

 been made prisoner by a limpet. It would appear that 

 in running about in search of food, the bird's toe had 

 accidentally got under a limpet, which, suddenly closing 

 to the rock, held it fast until the man came up, who 

 with his knife removed the limpet, and released the 

 bird." 



The Cornish giant, Tregeagle (who is said to have 

 been a wicked seigneur, once residing in a mansion on 

 the site of Dozmare, or Dosmery Pool, by which it was 

 engulphed, and his park transformed into the barren 

 waste now known as Bodmin Moor,) is supposed to 

 haunt Dozmare Pool, and is condemned to the hope- 

 less task of emptying it with a single limpet shell, 

 which has a hole bored in it. Tregeagle was not an 



* ' Juugle Life/ 



N 



