Silk Manufacture. 283 



and put forth the tongue. They extended and contracted this 

 organ several times, obtruding it in every direction, as if seeking 

 the fittest place whereon to fix iheir threads. After these trials 

 had been often repeated, the tongue of one was observed to re- 

 main for some time on the spot chosen, and being then drawn 

 back with great quickness, a thread was very easily discerned, 

 fastened to the place : this operation was repeated, until all the 

 threads were in sufficient number, one fibre being produced at 

 each movement of the tongue. 



' The old threads were found to differ materially from those 

 newly spun, the latter being whiter, more glossy, and more trans- 

 parent than the former, and it was thence discovered that it was 

 not the office of the tongue to transfer the old threads one by one 

 to the new spots where they were fixed, which course M. Reau- 

 mur had thought was pursued. The old threads once severed 

 from the spot to which they had been originally fixed were seen 

 to be useless, and that every fibre employed by the fish to secure 

 itself in a new position was produced at the time it was required ; 

 and, in short, that nature had endowed some fish, as well as many 

 land insects, with the power of spinning threads, as their natural 

 wants and instincts demanded. This fact was established incon- 

 trovertibly by cutting away, as close to the body as they could be 

 safely separated, the old threads, which were always replaced by 

 others in as short a space of time as was employed by other mus- 

 cles not so deprived in fixing themselves. 



' " The pinna and its cancer friend " have on more than one 

 occasion been made subjects for poetry. There is doubtless some 

 foundation for the fact of the mutual alliance between these aquatic 

 friends which has been thus celebrated ; yet some shght coloring 

 may have been borrowed from the regions of fancy to adorn the 

 verse, and even the prose history of their attachment may be ex- 

 posed to the same objection. 



' These fish are found on the coasts of Provence and Italy, and 

 in the Indian ocean. The largest and most remarkable species 

 inhabits the Mediterranean Sea. 



' The scuttle fish *, a native of the same seas as the pinna, is 

 Its deadly foe, and would quickly destroy it, if it were not for its 

 faithful ally. In common with all the same species, the pinna is 

 without the organs of sight, and could not, therefore, unassisted, 

 be aware of the vicinity of its dangerous enemy. A small animal 

 of the crab kind, itself destitute of a covering, but extremely quick- 

 sighted, takes refuge in the shell of the pinna, whose strong call 



* This species is the Octopodia, with eight arms connected at theirb ot- 

 toms by a membrane : it is the Polypus of Pliny. 



