SALTING THEIR TAILS. 3C5 



stooping over a hole — their coat-tails pendant in the water, 

 their breath suspended, one hand holding salt, the other 

 alert to clutch the victim — watching the pertm-bations of the 

 sand, like hungry cats beside the holes of mice ; and there 

 is something very absui^d in the aspect of the queer Solen, 

 poking up his inquisitive person ; though luhy he is thus 

 lured by the salt, I cannot guess. That he does not like 

 the salt, is pretty certain, from his spontaneous decapitation 

 under the infliction ;* but why this should lure him is not 

 intelligible. In conclusion, let me notice a passage in ]\Ir 

 Woodward's book, which not only contains an error, but 

 implies that the salting mode of capture is not known even 

 to well-informed naturalists.- "Professor E. Forbes," he 

 says, " has immortalised the sagacity of the razor-fish, who 

 submits to be salted in his hole, rather than expose himself 

 to be caught, after finding the enemy is lying in wait for 

 him."f I suppose the "sagacity'' was immortalised by 

 Forbes in one of his playful moods ; because not only is the 

 fact on which the inference rests inaccurate, the Solen 

 readily coming to his captor ; but the Solen can have only 

 slender pretensions to mental vigour of any kind. 



Indeed, we are incessantly at fault in our tendency to 

 authropomorphise, a tendency which causes us to interpret 

 the actions of animals accordinci; to the analogies of human 

 nature. Wherever we see motion which seems to issue 



* Strictly speaking, the Solen has no head at all. What is called the head, 

 in the text, is simply the siphonal tubes, which are formed of muscular rings, 

 placed longitudinally. In dissecting the Solen I found these rings spontane- 

 ously separate themselves in the water. 



f Manual of the Moliusca, p. 15. 



