244 PATELLIDiE. 



seems to have an equally wide distribution, although 

 Loven says that he had not met with it. 



Lister figured both forms of the " blue-rayed limpet/^ 

 or ^'peacock^s feathers/^ The young attach themselves to 

 the upper side of the fronds of the smooth tangle [LamU 

 naria saccharina) , and sometimes of L. digitata, (accord- 

 ing to Mace, Halymenia palmata also J which supply them 

 with succulent and abundant pasturage : when it grows 

 older, it attacks the stalks, and afterwards gets to the 

 base of the plant, into which it eats its way until it be- 

 comes almost buried in a cup-shaped cavity; it is then fat 

 and lazy. The best way of procuring such last mentioned 

 specimens is to tear up by its roots the large tangle, which 

 girdles the rocks at low water, and waves forwards and 

 backwards like a field of ripe corn in a summer breeze. 

 As, however, it is not an easy matter for a lady collector 

 to do this, she may avail herself of the next storm, and 

 hunt for the pretty prize among the sea-weeds thrown 

 up on the beach. This remarkable habitat was first 

 noticed by M. le Gentil, in the ' Memoires de TAca- 

 demie '' for 1788. If it had been known to English na- 

 turalists, so many of them would not have persisted 

 in considering the ordinary form on the leaves and the 

 variety imbedded in the roots as different species. The 

 crown is the same in each. The animal crawls with an 

 undulating motion. Some individuals, which I observed 

 in a glass vessel of sea-water, now and then protruded 

 their jaws and the front of their tongues, apparently for 

 the purpose of cleaning their teeth; and after doing 

 this, they ejected from the mouth a thick fluid of a 

 brownish colour — ^possibly the scrapings of the lingual 

 ribbon. The beak is almost terminal in young shells. 

 Specimens taken from the stalks of Laminaria at Dover 

 and in North Wales are fully an inch long, although 



