for convenience sake may be called the mouth, be situated in the course of the currents, and be endowed with the power of selecting and retaining such substances as are suitable for digestion.
The remaining classes divide themselves into flesh-eaters, and those which live upon vegetable diet, the preponderance, however, being, as well as can be estimated, rather with the former. Not a few of the Univalves feed upon their Bivalve relatives, not seizing the opportunity, as has been pretended, of killing their victim as it lies incautiously with gaping shells; but by drilling a small hole through one of the valves, and extracting the fleshy parts, particle by particle. Some species devour dead fishes and other putrifying animal matters with avidity. Many of the elegant naked-gilled tribes prey on each other, though their proper food consists of zoophytes. I have found the large Eolis papillosa tear away the tentacles of different species of sea-anemones, which seemed to be its natural food.
The Cephalopoda, including the Cuttles, the Poulpes, and the Squids, are fierce and predatory, the tyrants of the deep. Furnished with many long arms, stretching in all directions, and studded with rows of adhesive suckers, they seize with ruthless grasp any passing fish or other animal, whose strength is inferior to their own, and drag it to a hard and sharp horny beak, the mandibles of which resemble those of a parrot's bill, and being moved by powerful muscles are enabled either to crush the shells in which their victim may be enclosed, or to tear it to pieces if it be a fish, or other animal of muscular or sinewy tissues.
In speaking of the vegetable-feeding Mollusca, the ravages committed by those pests of our gardens, the Slug and Snail, will occur to every one. Other species of the same genera are never or rarely seen in gardens, but devour the herbage of the roadside, the bank, or the hedge. Many, particularly those which inhabit the woods of foreign countries, devour the leaves of trees. The plant-eaters among the marine tribes live upon the various kinds of sea-weeds, of which there is a sufficient variety to gratify a taste much more epicurean than it probably is in reality. The common Periwinkle and the Limpet are both vegetable feeders, and there is a pretty little species of the latter genus which invariably, I believe, confines itself to one plant: this is the Patella pellucida, distinguished by having on its summit three or four lines of blue, most brilliantly gemmeous. It feeds on the tangle, (Lammaria digitata) eating away a cavity for itself, just large enough to contain its body, in the substance of the cartilaginous stem, commonly beneath the shelter of the arching roots. I have pulled up the tangles by dozens at low spring-tide, and have scarcely ever found one that had attained certain dimensions without finding a little parasitical Limpet embedded in its substance.
If we measure the interest which we take in any section of created beings by their powers of conferring benefit or inflicting injury on our own race, we shall find the Mollusca not unworthy of our regard in both these respects. Many of them are used as human food, and that not by savage nations only, but by ourselves and by all classes of society. The Limpet, the Periwinkle, the Whelk, the Mussel, and the Cockle, are commonly sold in the streets of our sea-port towns and large cities, though these are certainly more prized by the lower classes of society than by those of more cultivated tastes. There is no doubt that many if not all of our larger Bivalves might be added to the list, and probably some of these might prove not unworthy of a place among more delicate viands. I have myself tried the large Pholas dactylus, that bores the sandstone, and have found its substance tender, and its taste agreeable.
PHOLAS.
The Cuttle-fishes, though but little used among ourselves, are prized by most other nations. Mr. Couch, speaking of the common Squid, declares that it is excellent, and compares it to tripe, a resemblance to which the kindred genus owes its name, for Kuttel in German signifies tripe. Among the people of Southern Europe the Cuttles are in high repute for the table, and this taste has been handed down from the ancient Greeks and Romans. The classics frequently allude to them as among the greatest delicacies. At the nuptial feast of Iphicrates a hundred Polypi and Sepiæ were served up. Among the Greeks generally they were disguised with various condiments and sauces; and the Poulpe, or Many-feet, (Polypus, the Octopus of modern zoology) was the most highly esteemed. Dr. Johnston quotes the "good old story" of Philoxenus in illustration of the gourmand taste for this ill-looking Cephalopod.
"Of all fish-eaters,
None, sure, excell'd the Lyric bard, Philoxenus.
'Twas a prodigious twist! At Syracuse,
Fate threw him on the fish call'd 'Many-feet.'
He purchased it, and drest it; and the whole,
Bate me the head, form'd but a single swallow.
A crudity ensued—the doctor came,
And the first glance inform'd him things went wrong.
And 'Friend,' quoth he, 'if thou hast aught to set
In order, to it straight;—pass but seven hours,
And thou and life must take a long farewell.'
'I've nought to do,' replied the bard, 'all's right
And tight about me.. …
. … .I were loath, howe'er,
To troop with less than all my gear about me;—
Good doctor, be my helper then to what
Remains of that same blessed Many-feet.' "
Snails appear to have found equal favour with the ancients. The Romans were accustomed to keep these animals in snail-sties, or Cochlearia, where they fattened them with nutritive pastes artificially made. The species was probably the Helix pomatia, which is considerably larger than our garden snail, but the dimensions which they are said to have attained under these favourable circumstances are so enormous as to be utterly incredible. The Illyrian snails were most esteemed for their size, and Pliny informs us that it was a matter of emulation among the amateur snail-feeders of that day to excel each other in the bulk to which their pets should attain; vaunting their most prodigious specimens, as prize pigs and oxen are boasted of among ourselves: "And in time men grew to take such a pride and glory in this artificial feat, namely, in striving who should have the biggest, that in the end one of their shells ordinarily would contain eighty measures called quadrants."[11]
Our continental neighbours still enjoy a dish of snails, and several attempts have been, from time to time, made to introduce them at English tables, but with very little success.
But among all the edible Mollusca, there is none that can compete with the Oyster. To speak of the universality of the esteem would be superfluous; but some statistical particulars may not be uninteresting, as showing the importance of this shell-fish in a commercial view. "The number of vessels immediately employed in the dredging for oysters on the Essex coast are about 200, from twelve to forty or fifty tons burden each, employing from 400 to 500 men and boys. The quantity of oysters bred, and taken, and consumed annually, mostly in London, is supposed to amount to 14,000 or 15,000 bushels. All the fisheries connected with this part of the coast, are stated to employ a capital supposed to amount to from £60,000 to £80,000."[12]
It is, however, not only as supplying food that the benefits of the Mollusca are to be estimated: they are useful also in the arts. The pearl, that splendid auxiliary to costume in all ages, glittering on the tiara of the Assyrian monarchs and on the diadem of our own sovereign, is a production of this class of animals, This, it is true, has no merit beyond its beauty, but the substance called mother-of-pearl is, as is well known, much used in the arts.
