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177

BARNACLES.

DAME Peyton, for that was the old woman's name, thanked her, and accepted her offer, more, perhaps, for the pleasure of talking to the young lady on the way, than for any use in her assistance. The load, though bulky, was very light. The basket was chiefly filled with the little black bladders of a particular kind of sea weed. These, when dried and oiled, she strung, and sent by her daughter to the shops in a town hard by, where they were made into necklaces and bracelets, for whosoever, gentle or simple, might chance to have a liking for such. The dame loved talking, and she pursued her discourse. "You were a-looking for shells, miss, when I came by, I suppose; and, if I may be so bold, I can show you more in an hour than you would find in a week without me; for I know where the beds of them lies, and where the sea urchins bide, miss, if ever you heard of them urchins."

Lucy was eager to find a sea urchin, and had been searching for one in vain. As soon as they reached the cottage at the gate where she lived, Dame Peyton pointed to a shelf in her corner cupboard, on which were several shells, which had been left there by her sailor son, who had picked

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up some of them from the neighbouring sands, and some from foreign parts.

The shell of the sea urchin, which Lucy first examined, was about the size of an orange, the shape of a turnip, and divided into compartments like a melon; the colour was lilac, looking as if it was sprinkled thickly with little white frosted sugar-plums, and perforated besides with a multitude of holes smaller than pin-holes. In a fresher shell, which she next examined, Lucy observed that its surface was nearly covered with spines, which looked like the prickles of a hedge-hog. Having read the description of this shell-fish, she knew that these spines serve for legs, with which, at the bottom of the sea, it can walk, as it is said, in any direction, sometimes with its mouth upwards, sometimes with its mouth downwards, sometimes rolling along like a wheel. Through the multitude of pin-holes the animal occasionally protrudes feelers or tentaculæ, with which it feels its way before it. The opening at the upper part of the shell serves for its mouth. To this it conveys, by means of the tentaculæ nearest to it, the food most agreeable to it, which it devours voraciously.

Lucy, who knew all this from her books, was eager to see the fish alive, with all its spines about it. But Dame Peyton's dinner was ready, boiling over in her pot; and, though the good-natured

old woman would have left it to go that instant to show Lucy the haunt of the urchins, yet Luey would not let her. She waited till evening, and then Harry accompanied her, though rather unwilling to lay by his adze, and leave his canoe.

As he went with Lucy towards the appointed place, he objected to her wonderful account of the urchin's mode of walking on the spines. He said, that, as these creatures were in the habit of walking only at the bottom of the sea, few people, only those who had gone down in a diving bell, could have observed them walking.

"You shall see, you shall see them yourself, Harry," said Lucy.

She recollected what she had read, that Reaumur had first seen an urchin walking at the bottom of a shallow pan, full of sea water, and, at her request, Dame Peyton had provided one of her shallow milk pans to show the experiment. They found her waiting for them when they reached Urchin's-town. She took out one from a number of these fish, which had congregated together, and put the apparently inanimate ball into the pan full of water. Presently it sent forth some of its hundred horns through the holes in its shell, and soon stretching its spines, it appeared with all its wiry looking prickles full upon it. Thirteen hundred horns and two thousand spines were counted. Now, Harry, see it

"It moves! it moves!

rising up. Now it is putting out its feelers from beneath. Now look at it feeling about like a blind man with his staff. And now he is really beginning to walk! Look at him walking on his spines, like a wheel on its spokes. How beautifully he goes on!".

"He is an admirable mechanic!" exclaimed Harry. "Look how he uses some of his spines as a fulcrum, against which he pushes, and draws on his shell by turns. I did not think any fish could have so much sense."

Harry's admiration increased, as well it might, the more he considered these things.

"Now, Harry, you see that even my shell-hunting leads to something," said Lucy. "You will not despise shell fish, when you know more about them and their houses."

After this day, whenever Harry wanted to rest himself from his hard labour, he used to go to Lucy, to learn something more of her shells.

One day she showed him the shell of the razorfish, and told him in what an ingenious manner the fish which inhabits this shell can move itself forward or descend into its sandy hole. It does not walk upon spines, but by means of its tongue. It has a fleshy cylindrical tongue, which it can use by turns as a shovel, a hook, a borer, and a ball. When it wants to go on, it forms its tongue into the shape of a hook, which it strikes into the sand,

and by which it pulls its body after it. When it wants to descend it bores a hole in the sand with its tongue, sometimes two feet in depth; and when it wants to ascend to the surface it forms the end of its tongue into the shape of a ball, which stops the bottom of the hole, and serves as a fulcrum; and then making an effort to extend the whole tongue, pushes the shell upwards, till, by a repetition of this operation, it gains the surface.

Of all things, Lucy most wished to see a barnacle, not for its beauty, nor for its rarity, but on account of the strange stories she had read concerning it. She had first met with some account of it in a note on the barnacle, in her Bewick's British Birds; and afterwards she had copied from some other book a whole page of its fabulous history. She searched along the shore many a time in vain for a barnacle. To her great joy Dame Peyton gave her a bit of an old wreck that had been found by her sailor boy to which some barnacles were sticking. Lucy ran with her treasure to Harry, and showed it to him. The barnacles looked something like cords of transparent, dirty white, flexible gristle, branching from one centre or body, into various arms; at the end, or summit, of each branch, there was a small shell, about the size of a bean, and of the shape of the bill of a large bird. -These arms, or branches, are called pedicles, or footstalks; by these the fish attaches itself to

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