Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1903-09-09
ABOUT A BORING MoLLusK.
comes Accustomed to Summons
at Feeding Time.

Down at the bottom of balanced
aquarium tank, cylindrical glass jar
16 inches deep by a foot in diameter, in
the heart OF bunch of brain coral about
the shape of and four times as big as a
doorknob, at the New York aquarium,
lives self-imprisoned creature whose
presence there was unsupported for
year, says the Sun.
When this piece of coral, which was
brought up from Bermuda something
more than year ago, was placed on
the bottom Of the tank, there was OBJ
server In 1t, a little to one side from the
top, an oval-shaped opening about three
eighths of an inch one way by a quar-
ter OF an. inch the other, with a little
spear OF some marine vegetation that
looked like the bleached- out tip of a
tiny blade of grass projecting across one
end OF the opening underneath. That
was all there was to it, so far as ap-
pearances went-a little hole in the top
OF the coral, with little scrap of sea
grass across the under side of it.
After the coral was placed in the tank
it remained without sign of life for a
year. Then one day few weeks ago, at
feeding time, when the food was carried
down through the water on the end Of
slender rod, something within the open
ing brushed aside that spear of grass
from across the under side and fairly
nlled up the little opening with itself,
this something being the end of Dor
ing mollusk, which had been living in
there all this time without anybody's
knowing it, and which had now for the
first time come into view
1t had been getting what it could or
what CHANGED to come to it for food, but
at last, apparently, it had come to the
door of its self-made cell to get for it
self some share of the food supplied to
the tank
And now whenever the edge of it's cell
door is tapped gently with the tip of the
feed stick this boring mollusk comes
forward from within, and, thrusting
aside that spear of grass, which always
falls back across the opening when the
mollusk retires from it, fills up the door
way as 1t did on it's first appearance It
might now be described as a tame mol
lusk
There are many kinds of boring mol
lusks, one example being the teredo,
commonly called the shipworm, which |
bores in wood. There are many stone |
Dorers. The soft sandstone rock that is |
hshed up from the ocean bottom off the |
Jersey coast is honeycombed with the |
borings of such animals, which, free |
swimmers in their earliest stage, wher |
they are very small, attach themselves |
to the rock and bore into it. making |
small hole through which they get in
and boring out bigger place after they |
get inside, as they continue to grow
inside their stone cell they are safe from
other marine animals which would prey
upon them outside, and they get their
own food through the opening
And there they live their appointed |
lives. unless they should bore too deep
and bore through the rock, when the
tides might wash them out; or they
might SO honeycomb mass of rock that
{ would fall and involve thousands in
a common destruction.
But there are boring mollusks which
bore into substance much harder than
the soft porous sandstone rock, like this
one up from Bermuda, now perhaps an
inch IN length. which has bored into
and, as 1tgrew, bored out home for it.
self In the heart of piece of hard brain
coral. and which comes now to the door
81 its cell when you tap on the dooriamt
with stick.