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stance of the stone and enlarge their apartment, as their increasing size renders 

 it necessary. The seeming unfitness, however, of these animals for penetrating 

 into rocks, and there forming an habitation, has induced many Philosophers 

 to suppose 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 afterwards became hard- 

 ened round them by degrees. This opinion has been confuted in a very satis- 

 factory 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 them after they were 

 erected ; for no workman would have labored 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 attack- 

 ed them during the time in which they continued buried under water after the 

 Earthquake that swallowed up the city. From hence it appears, that in all 

 nature there is not a greater instance of perseverance and patience than that 

 which this animal is seen to exhibit. Furnished with the bluntest and softest 

 auger, by slow successive applications it effects what other animals are incapa- 

 ble of performing by force, penetrating the hardest bodies with only its tongue. 

 When (as I have before stated) while yet very small, it has effected an en- 

 trance, and buried its body in the stone, it there continues for life at its ease, 

 the sea water that enters at the little aperture supplying the animal with luxuri- 

 ous plenty. Upon this seemingly thin diet it by degrees grows larger and 

 larger, and soon finds itself under the necessity of increasing the dimensions of 

 its habitation and its shell. 



The motion of the Pholas is slow almost beyond conception : its progress 

 keeps pace with its growth of body ; and in proportion as it becomes larger, it 

 makes its way further into the rock; when it penetrated to a certain depth, it 

 turns from its former direction and hollows downward, till at last, when its hab- 

 itation is completed, the whole apartments resemble the bowl of a tobacco- 

 pipe, the hole in the shank being that by which the animal entered. Thus 

 immured, the Pholas lives in darkness, indolence and plenty : it never removes 

 from the narrow mansion into which it has penetrated, and seems perfectly 

 content with being inclosed in its own sepulchre. These animals are found 

 in the greatest quantity at Ancona in Italy, also along the shores of Normandy 

 and Poictou in France, and upon some of the coasts of Scotland. In general, 

 they are considered as a great delicacy at the tables of the luxurious. 



