214 SHELLS AND MOLLUSCOUS ANIMALS. 



patiently in their canoes, and with a baited hair- 

 line, without any hook, jerk out a little fish." 

 These poor creatures often suffer severely from 

 famine, when, by a succession of strong gales, 

 they are prevented from reaching the rocks on 

 which the limpets grow. 



Nor was the limpet destined for the food of 

 man only. The sea-gulls and ducks feed on them, 

 while the pied oyster-catcher receives its name 

 from its habit of devouring the oyster and common 

 limpet. The bill of this bird is admirably con- 

 stA acted for opening the valves of the one, and 

 loosing the other from its hold on the rock, while 

 the crow, not thus favoured, has recourse to a 

 device for getting at the shell-fish. " A friend of 

 Dr. Darwin's," says an interesting writer in 

 London's Magazine of Natural History, " saw 

 above a hundred crows on the northern coast of 

 Ireland, at once preying upon mussels. Each 

 one took a mussel up in the air twenty or forty 

 yards high, and let it fall on the stones, and thus 

 broke its shell. Many authorities might be 

 adduced in corroboration of this statement. In 

 Southern Africa, so many of the shell-fish are 

 consumed by these and other birds, as to have 

 given rise to an opinion that the marine shells 

 found buried in the distant plains, or in the sides 

 of mountains, have been carried there by their 

 agency, and not, as is generally supposed, by 

 eruptions of the sea." Crows, even, and vultures, 

 as well as aquatic birds, carry off these shell-fish, 

 and Mr. Barrow, who is of this opinion, says that 

 shells are thus carried to the very summit of the 

 Table Mountain. He adds ; " In one cavern at 

 the point of Mussel Bay, I disturbed some thou- 



