subject: The Vacuum-grip Of The Limpet [print this page] The simplicity of the outward appearance of the limpet's tent is deceiving: for it belongs to the snails and its young show distinct coils. Associated with the limpets on the same rocks are chitons, or armadillo snails, which have eight, hard, transverse plates in a line, as unlike an ordinary snail as may be. They cling tightly, and when pried off curls up like a pill-bug, or an armadillo. In my brief resume of my devolution I have said there was a time when my ancestors had many more ribs than I, and this repetition of similar parts is an almost certain sign of lowness of type. The chitons are the only snails with more than one shell; they have eight, and all quite untwisted, in a straight line.
We have mussels, snails, limpets and chitons, all living close to the shore, all protected with hard shells from danger. The rocks should be covered with untold hosts of them, as safe in the battle of life as a knight in full armor would be in an encounter with half a dozen serfs. But the law of compensation is always at work, and there can be no aces up the sleeve in the game with Nature. The stakes are Life or Death and too often the dice seem loaded in favor of Mung. Here is an unusually large, strong limpet. His vacuum grip defies the smash of waves; his constitution can withstand the occasional drenchings and submersions of fresh rainwater; his gills hold sufficient store of salt water to last through prolonged heat droughts. Yet one day, without warning, there occurs whatever, in limpet language, stands for explosion, eruption, tornado, cyclone- his house is ripped from its foundation, he disappears down a great throat, and he is troubled no more by the self-sufficient smugness of too great success.
And the oystercatcher, the great black and white bird, wipes her scarlet, knifelike beak on the nearest rock, and trots unconcernedly on to the next limpet or mussel or chiton. Any sympathy for the snail is leavened by thoughts of the untold generations of oystercatchcrs during which the shape, pattern, thinness, sharpness, verticalness of their beak blades have developed hand in hand with habit and skill. Admiration of a specialist in attack must always exceed concern for the safety of a pacifist..
Again please visualize a limpet that has attained adult snailhood unharmed by elements or waterfowl. He is crouched in his perfect fitting form, perhaps peering out through the merest crack at his two-plane world, when he feels the touch of a tentacle on his shell. Instantly he draws tightly down and does everything that a limpet knows in the way of bolts, bars, portcullis, blinds and vizors. Still his sensitive shell transmits the shifting play of a delicate touch. Then a heavy weight presses down, and for a time nothing more happens.
by: David Bunch
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