140 HABITS AND ECONOMY OF THE MOLLUSCA. 



with the bones of mammals, birds, fishes, the ashes of fire, broken 

 pottery, and domestic implements made of stone or bone. They 

 are the remains of pre-historic feasts -, and some of these mounds 

 are so great as to indicate that they were resorted to for 

 centuries. The species of shells are usually those which now 

 inhabit the neighboring sea, and which are still eaten. 



Mollusks are gathered in great quantity for fishing-bait ; thus 

 the cuttle-fish is used in the cod-fishery, ofi" Newfoundland ; the 

 Patella (limpet) and Buccinum (whelk) on the British, and the 

 Octopus and Cardium on the French coasts. A large number of 

 wild animals either habitually live on mollusks, or take them in 

 default of other food ; the rat and the raccoon seek for them 

 when pressed by hunger ; the musk-rat loves Uniones and the 

 open valves, remains of his feasts, are often seen near American 

 streams ;* the South American otter and the crab-eating opossum 

 constantly resort to salt marshes, and the sea, in order to prey 

 on the moUusca. The walrus lives almost exclusively on Mya 

 arenaria and M. truncal a ; some cetaceans destro}'^ prodigious 

 quantities of mollusks and are par excellence the squid-eaters or 

 Teuthophages (Eschricht) ; thus in the stomach of divers 

 Hj'^peroodons have been found more than two quarts of cepha- 

 lopod beaks (Jacob), several hundred sepia beaks (B3derly), 

 finally, more than eighteen quarts of these beaks, and nothing else 

 (Gray). Twenty-nine beaks were found in the first stomach of 

 a grampus, and that of a globicephalus contained nothing else 

 (Fischer). In the regions frequented hy these cetaceans may be 

 seen thousands of the bodies of Sepia, thrown to one side after 

 the head has been bitten ofi" and eaten (Lesson) ; these bodies 

 are probably rejected on account of the cuttle-bone, which the 

 whale does not appear to consider nutritious. Ambergris, an 

 intestinal product of the cachelot, contains, the beaks of cepha- 

 lopods, which probably communicate to this substance its musky 

 odor. 



The Balsena is said by several authors to live habitually on the 

 Pteropoda (Limacina and Clio), but it has been proven that 

 banks of small crustaceans tCetochilus) form its principal food. 



Sea-fowl search for littoral species at every ebbing tide, whilst 

 the dvicks and herons destroy fresh-water mollusks, and many 

 birds eat terrestrial snails. The Kagou (Hhynochetus jubatus) 

 of New Caledonia lives on the large Bulimi, the shell of which 

 it pierces with its beak (Marie). The Gorfous f Eudyi^tea chrys- 

 olopha), which swims very well upon the ocean, even attacks the 

 cephalopods, and the stomach of one of these birds was found to 

 contain about twenty mandibles of Ommastrephes (Yelain). 



* This animal is believed to bring the mollusk out of the water and place 

 it where the heat of the sun kills it, causing the valves to open. 



