158 New York State Museum 



thin epidermis and measures up to an inch or so in length. 

 Other species are also found buried in sand. There are 

 many forms that do not necessarily inhabit sandy beaches 

 the shells of which are cast up on the sand beaches. 

 Among these are the Petricola that bores in clay beds 

 and is washed out of its burrows by the surf ; the Horse 

 or Bearded Mussel which is extremely common on all 

 beaches north of Hatteras, the northern coast of Europe, 

 Alaskan Waters and Puget Sound, although it is not a 

 shallow water form but is found attached by its byssus 

 usually on gravelly bottoms and in crevices of rock below 

 low-tide level; the Chestnut Astarte {Astarte castanea), 

 of cold-water range, which lives along the New England 

 coast in deeper waters and after a storm is frequently 

 cast upon the beaches where the small shells, thick and 

 heavy for their size (one inch by one inch) and with a 

 thick, chestnut colored epidermis, soon attract attention; 

 the Atlantic Wing Shells (Avicula atlantica), the red- 

 dish brown, obliquely oval shells with long winglike ex- 

 tension washed up on the Florida beaches attached by 

 their byssus to large algae; the Jingle Shells (Anomia 

 simple x= glabra) so called from the ringing sound they 

 make when waves beat upon a beach strewn with them; 

 and the Scallops (Pecten) many species of which live 

 along our coasts and are found washed up on the beaches. 

 Of the Jingle Shells, A. simplex is the commoner large 

 form of the New England coast, one to three inches in 

 diameter, irregular in shape and with the surface vari- 

 ously undulated. Thousands of these valves are cast up 

 on the beaches from the West Indies to Cape Cod. It is 

 found as far north as Cape Sable but it is rare north of 

 Massachusetts bay. This is a shallow-water form, not 

 living at a depth of more than 70 feet. There is a large 



