98 
BULLETIN OF TH E NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
Jones. Prince Edward Island, common and large, Dawson .. 
Abundant on every sand bar, J. H % Duvar. Undoubtedly 
one of the most common of Molluscs around the entire coast 
of Acadia. 
Habits. Ho reader of this paper can require a description of this 
species to enable him to identify the Clam. Who does not know 
this most ubiquitous of Molluscs? But not so many, perhaps, have 
acquaintance with its habits. 
Upon every mud or sand beach 
around the sea-coast of Acadia, the 
visitor will see very many round holes, 
half an inch in diameter, from which, 
as he walks near them, streams of water 
are frequently forcibly ejected. At the 
bottoms of these, at a depth of from six 
inches to over a foot, according to 
locality and character of the soil, the 
Clams are to be found, standing up- 
right at the bottoms of their burrows, for 
such they are. Yet it does not properly 
stand upright in the sense that a man 
does, for it stands head downwards, the 
tough, black, protruding part, common- 
ly called the head, not being that organ 
at all. If this black part be dissected, 
it will be found to consist of two tubes, 
the “ siphons,” bound together, with 
thick, tough walls, both leading into 
the general cavity of the animal in which 
all of the internal organs lie. The only 
other opening into the animal’s body is 
a small one at the opposile end which 
allows the animal to thrust out its 
muscular, extensible “foot.” It is by 
the use of this foot that it can move up 
and down in its burrow, within certain 
limits, or form a new one if necessary. 
If a Clam be placed upright in some sand at the bottom of a glass 
vessel of salt water it will need only careful watching, with perhaps a 
little experimenting, to show that there is a current flowing into one of 
the tubes — that away from the hinge side and the larger— and a current 
out of the other, or the smaller one towards the hinge side. The- 
dissection of another specimen will show the internal organs in position,. 
Fig. 18. — My a arenaria. 
One-half natural Size. 
