A PINCH OF SALT 
accept this story without question because I find it 
printed in a book? In the first place, is it not most 
remarkable that if the ducks had discovered that 
the bivalves could not live in fresh water, they 
should not also have discovered that they could not 
live in the air? In fact, that they would die as soon 
in the air as in the fresh water?! See how much 
trouble the ducks could have saved themselves by 
going and sitting quietly upon the beach, or putting 
their heads under their wings and going to sleep 
on the wave. Oysters are often laid down in fresh 
water to “fatten” before being sent to market, and 
probably mussels would thrive for a short time in 
fresh water equally well. In the second place, a 
duck’s tongue is a very short and stiff affair, and is 
fixed in the lower mandible as in a trough. Ducks 
do not protrude the tongue when they feed; they 
cannot protrude it; and if a duck can crush a mus- 
sel-shell with its beak, what better position could it 
have the bivalve in than fast to the tongue between 
the upper and the lower mandible? The story is 
certainly a very “fishy’’ one. In all such cases the 
mind follows the line of least resistance. If the 
ducks were deliberately holding their bills under 
water, it is easier to believe that they did it because 
they thereby found some relief from pain, than that 
they knew the bivalves would let go their hold 
1 T have tried the experiment on two ordinary clams, and they 
both died on the third day. 
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