54 WEST COAST SHELLS 



waves and washed ashore. The outside of this upper 

 valve is rough, and marked by irregular, radiating 

 ridges ; but the inside is sometimes beautifully pearly, 

 the green and purple tints being most common. 

 There are two muscle-scars, the lower one of which 

 is not shown in the cut, but it is smaller and smoother 

 than the other. The shell is normally circular, though 

 it assumes various shapes. The picture represents a 

 rather small specimen. When the structure and 

 color of the interior are once known, even a small 

 fragment of this shell can be readily recognized. 



Anomia lampe^ Gray, the Lawless Shell. This is 

 a southern species, similar to the last, but smaller, 

 the animal having a very thin and delicate shell. It 

 also lies upon its right valve, which is concave and 

 perforated. Through the opening runs a strong 

 byssal plug, firmly attaching the whole to the sup- 

 port on which it rests. In color it is yellow and 

 shining, and the upper valve is marked with four 

 muscle impressions instead of two, as in the last spe- 

 cies. It gets its name from its irregular habits of 

 growth. Some call this shell Anomia peruviana. 



A great many years ago there were plenty of large 

 oysters living off the coast of a land that was in time 

 to become the State of California. Some of them 

 were very large indeed, so big that a ten-year-old 

 boy would not want to carry one of them far with- 

 out resting. These shells would be almost as long as 

 one of his arms and a good deal thicker than his two 

 fists, and what a time he would have in trying to 

 open one of them. 



