THE CLAM. 191 
dogs, and what they leave some lower form of 
animal life manages to consume. Nothing eat- 
able that is once brought in is ever by any 
chance swept, or carried, out again, and either 
becomes some other form of life, or, decompos- 
ing, assumes its elemental condition. 
An old settler once told me a story, as we 
were hunting together, and I think I can vouch 
for the truth of what he related, of having 
seen a duck trapped by a clam:—‘ You see, sir, 
as I was a-cruising down these flats about 
sun-up, the tide jist at the nip, as it is now, I 
see a whole pile of shoveller ducks snabbling in 
the mud, and busy as dogfish in herring-time ; 
so I creeps down, and slap I lets ’em have it: 
six on ’em turned over, and off went the pack 
gallows-scared, and quacking like mad. Down 
I runs to pick up the dead uns, when I see an 
old mallard a-playing up all kinds o’ antics, 
jumping, backing, flapping, but fast by the head, 
as if he had his nose in a steel trap; and when I 
comes up to him, blest if a large clam hadn’t 
hold of him, hard and fast, by the beak. The 
old mallard might a’ tried his darndest, but may 
I never bait a martin-trap again if that clam 
wouldn’t a’ held him agin any odds ’til the tide 
run in, and then he’d a’ been a gone shoveller 
