CHAPTER III. TRANSPLANTATION OF BIVALVES. BIVALVES frequently lie with their shells slightly apart, and, as is well known, quickly close upon objects which happen to be introduced between the valves. Birds, wading about at the muddy and sandy margins of ponds or rivers, and aquatic or amphibious animals of various kinds sometimes accidentally insert their toes, and the mollusc, in such a case, closing quickly and often holding on for a considerable time, is liable, if not too heavy, to be carried away and to be set down, perhaps, in a new home, possibly at a great distance from its original habitat. Accidents of this kind, there is reason to suppose, happen much more frequently than might at first seem probable, for numerous instances have been recorded, and probably not more than one in a thousand comes under the notice of an observer, and the number recorded must be small as compared with the number actually observed. A few facts serving in a general way to illustrate the liability of bivalves to be carried away upon objects chancing to come between the valves are perhaps worth giving. Rural folk who make cream-skimmers of the valves of the great pond-mussels (Anodonta cygnea) procure them, according to Mr. Jeffreys, by means of a long pointed stick, which is inserted between the gaping shells. The animal closes upon the stick and allows itself to be drawn up out of the water.' Pearlmussels (Unio margaritifer), as Professor Tate relates, are dragged to shore by country boys in a similar manner upon long slender rods. I recently experimented by the Lea upon a number of Anodonta and Uniones, most of which, I found, allowed themselves to be drawn from the mud and out of the water upon inserted grassstems. A few fell almost immediately, but, of six which were carried away suspended upon the grasses, four (two of each genus) were still holding on when I reached home after the space of an hour and a half, including about ten minutes in a train; these were then suspended from a shelf, and one Anodonta (two and a half inches long) still retained its hold fifty-one hours after it had been taken from its habitat, and on being placed in water it extended its foot and ultimately became detached. The Rev. E. A. Woodruffe-Peacock tells me that he used to catch hundreds of mussels in his father's fish-pond in this way, drawing them to land upon stiff straws, twigs, or fine wire, and the fact that the creatures will allow themselves to be thus taken seems to have been long known, for Sir Robert Redding, in a letter dated in 1688, mentioned that the poor people in 1 "British Conchology,” i. (1862), lxviii. 2 Tate, "Land and Fresh-water Mollusks,” 1866, p. 27, and see also "Science Gossip" for 1870, pp. 265-6. the North of Ireland fished for pearl-mussels some with their toes, some with wooden tongs; and "some by putting a sharpened stick into the opening of the shell take them up." The Rev. J. W. Horsley, while trolling with a dead fish for pike, once brought up a large Unio which had closed upon the bait. A friend of Mr. W. D. Crick's, as the latter told Mr. Darwin, often, while fishing in rapid streams, caught small Uniones upon the hook, and Mr. F. Darwin, when fishing off the shores of North Wales, several times caught mussels in a similar way. According to Mr. D. Pidgeon, heartcockles (Isocardia cor) have been known to close upon the shanks of accidentally intrusive fish-hooks with such force as to crush the edges of their shells against the steel wire, and they permit themselves to be drawn in with the line to which the hook is attached, many having been thus taken by the long-line fishermen on the Irish coast.3 Marine bivalves, such as cockles, mussels, etc., have several times been found clinging to the toes or bills of birds of various kinds, and the 1 66 Philosophical Transactions," xvii. (1693), 660. Instances of the capture by marine bivalves of fish, mice, a rat, foxes, etc., have also been recorded: see as to fish, "Popular Science Monthly,” xvii. (1880), III; oyster and mouse, "Science Gossip," 1875, p. 68; oyster and mouse, " Daily Telegraph," quoted in the " Field," lxvi. (1885), 499; oysters and mice, several cases, "Bell's Weekly Messenger,” etc., quoted in Loudon's “ Mag. Nat. Hist.," ii. (1829), 150; oyster and young rat, caught by the tail, "Life Lore," ii. (1890), 216; mussel and fox, caught by the tongue, Loudon's 'Mag. Nat. Hist.," viii. (1835), 227-8; oyster and fox, 66 observed instances, of which I am tempted to give notes, are perhaps suggestive; but birds thus entrapped -whether by marine or fresh-water bivalves-must often be unable to carry away the molluscs to any considerable distance, especially when the creatures happen to close upon their bills. A dunlin with a small cockle about the size of a hazel-nut clinging to its bill was once found, near the estuary of the Moy, by Mr. Robert Warren. It was seen to be making frantic efforts to get rid of the shell, rising two or three yards into the air and falling again, and after shaking its head until exhausted, it lay with outstretched wings panting on the sands.' A bird of the same kind with a cockle similarly attached, which had been picked up dead on the Yorkshire coast, was forwarded to the offices of the Field, in 1884, by Sir R. Payne-Gallwey. Another dunlin with a cockle upon its bill, which got up from the observer's feet and flew heavily away, was shot in 1891. A tern with a cockle fixed on the on the upper mandible was once shot, on the sands at Morecambe Bay, by Mr. Hancock, who has given an account, also, of the capture, on Fenham Flats, of a peewit in a similar plight, having a cockle firmly grasping its bill.* A caught by the tongue, " Daily News," October 5, 1892; racoons and other animals are also said to have been entrapped by shell-fish. ' R. Warren," Field," lxiii. (1884), 447. "Scottish Naturalist," 1891, p. 94. Hancock's "Catalogue of the Birds of Northumberland and Durham,” “Nat. Hist. Trans. of Northumberland and Durham," vi. (1874), 142. sandpiper which had a large cockle upon one of its claws and was unable to fly was seen by Mr. D. McNabb, in 1889, on the coast of Queensland,' and a curlew sandpiper with a cockle hanging to one of its toes was shot, a few years ago, as Mr. J. H. Gurney tells me, by Mr. G. Hoare, at Cley, in Norfolk; a snipe with a large cockle attached in the same way is said to have been shot on the wing in or about 1866,' and the shooting of a sanderling with a cockle thus attached was recorded in 1872.3 Mr. Gurney tells me that a tern, caught by the foot by a mussel, was found some twenty-five years ago on the Hunstanton beach in the Wash by Mr. F. Cresswell, and that a grey crow with a mussel upon its bill was caught by Mr. C. Springall, in 1888, on the beach at Brancaster. An account, as related by an old hunter, of the finding of a shoveller duck with an otter's-shell (Lutraria) upon its bill was given by Mr. J. K. Lord in 1865. Mr. Buckland (on the authority of Mr. F. Hill, of Helston) has described the capture of a rail by an oyster; the specimens, of which a photograph was obtained, had been mounted in a case. Mr. Norgate tells me that he saw a stuffed water-rail, with its bill in an oyster-shell, at the National Fisheries Exhibition, at Norwich, in 1881. 'D. McNabb, "Nature," xlii. (1890), 415. 2 J. B., "Science Gossip," 1866, p. 63. 3 H. R. Leach, "Zoologist," (2), vii. (1872), 3314. 4 J. K. Lord, "Science Gossip," 1865, p. 79. 5 "Popular Science Monthly," xvii. (1880), 111-4, copied from "Land and Water." |