. Shells and sea-life. JJRING our last walk we noticed someof the mollusks which are foundiving upon the rocks. In manyplaces the seaweeds live theretoo, and when the tide is out youcan see great patches of oliA^e-green vegetation almost entirelycovering the hard, gray name of the most common of these plantsis Fucus, and of this there are several of them contain little air-sacks near theirtips, which act as floats, and assist in keeping themerect when the water is over them. But when thetide is low, you find them lying flat on the sur-face of the rock, or hanging limp fr
. Shells and sea-life. JJRING our last walk we noticed someof the mollusks which are foundiving upon the rocks. In manyplaces the seaweeds live theretoo, and when the tide is out youcan see great patches of oliA^e-green vegetation almost entirelycovering the hard, gray name of the most common of these plantsis Fucus, and of this there are several of them contain little air-sacks near theirtips, which act as floats, and assist in keeping themerect when the water is over them. But when thetide is low, you find them lying flat on the sur-face of the rock, or hanging limp from its sides. These seaweeds are veryancient plants, and weregrowing in the ocean longbefore there were any treesupon the land. They do avast amount of good, puri-fying the water and giving 103 REFERENCE TOPICS. Plants witliout flowers. is variiisli ?Uses of advantages. 104 WESTERN SERIES OF Figure food to numberless ani-mals. Some of them areeven eaten by men, andvaluable chemicals areobtained from theirashes. If you turn back someof these limp plants, youwill probably find sev-eral interesting forms oflife nestling beneath them, and amongthese forms will probably be a numberof mollusks. The first are theChitons (kitons),some of which areshown in the il-lustrations. Queercreatures are theseChitons, very slow in their move-ments, shy in their habits, and,withal, perfectly harmless. Theyare generally found clingingfirmly to the surface of a rock,and often they select cracks andcrevices for greater 59. If you pry One of them off with
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectmollusk, bookyear1901
