270 SUMMER 



the limpet's shell, and tie a string to it, the ingenious 

 mollusc would still be as hard to remove as a leather sucker 

 from the pavement ; for it forms a concavity at the centre, 

 with a firm band of muscle at the edge. ' Experiments have 

 been made showing that a force of sixty-two pounds, or 1984 

 times its own weight, is required to detach it from the rock.' 

 Not content with its power of clinging to any flat surface, it 

 chooses a lair in some snug nook that fits its size, and retires 

 to it as the tide leaves its rock dry. 



Small white acorn barnacles stud almost every rock in 

 the gaps left by the mussels ; they look like a kind of natural 

 rough-cast or deposit of lime. The great goose-barnacles 

 are rarer ; they are occasionally seen clinging in bunches to 

 wreckage which has long floated on the waters before being 

 tossed on shore. Like certain slugs they seem to have 

 greatly outgrown their shells, which are attached to the 

 timber by a fleshy stalk. From the shell protrude a dozen 

 threads which constantly finger the sea-waters and collect 

 small food for the mouth behind them. The belief still 

 lingers on some parts of the coast that the barnacle geese 

 which visit us in autumn and winter are developed from these 

 sea- creatures instead of from eggs. For all their primitive 

 appearance barnacles are crustaceans, and comparatively high 

 in the scale of life. 



Shell-hunters know how the sea tends to drop dead shells 

 not broadcast but in lines along the shore, and the same 

 sifting action of sea-water in motion is evident in the beaches 

 of shingle and sand. There is an order in all the sea's wild- 

 ness, and less chaos on the wet beach than among the 

 tumbled cliffs above. The frontal attack of the breakers 

 drives the pebbles beyond the sand, and lifts the biggest 

 pebbles to high -water mark ; we walk to the sea at low- 

 water through a succession of zones. There is the same 



