THE DACTYLE PHOLAS. 333 



Its uncommon perseverance and patience. 



Many philosophers, however, have been in- 

 duced to suppose, from the apparent unfitness 

 of this animal for penetrating into rocks, and 

 there forming a habitation, that they entered the 

 rock while it was yet in a soft state, and, from 

 the petrifying quality of the water, that the whole 

 rock afterward hardened round them by degrees. 

 This opinion, however, has been confuted in a 

 very satisfactory manner by Dr. Bohads, who 

 observed that many of the pillars of the temple 

 of Serapis at Puteoli were penetrated by these 

 animals ; whence he justly concludes that the 

 pholades must have pierced into them after they 

 were erected ; for no workman would have la- 

 bored a pillar into form, if it had been honey- 

 combed by worms in the quarry. In short, 

 there can be no doubt but that the pillars were 

 perfectly sound when erected, and that these 

 animals attacked them during the time in which 

 they continued buried under water, from the 

 earthquake that swallowed up the city. 



Hence the pholades afford a wonderful in- 

 stance of perseverance and patience. Furnished 

 with the bluntest and softest augre, by slow suc- 

 cessive applications, it effects what other aijimals 

 are incapable of performing by force, penetrating 

 the hardest bodies only with its tongue. When, 

 while yet very small, it has effected an entrance 

 and buried its body in the stone, it there con- 

 tinues for life at its ease; the sea water that 

 enters at the little aperture supplying it with 



