THE LIMPET

Evening Star, Issue 21784, 28 July 1934, Page 5

THE LIMPET

There are many more beautiful things m the sea than the limpet. I'here are pretty shells by the shore, but the uinpet is not one ol them. But, if Natuio has withheld beauty, she has given him clinging power. •• To stick like a limpet'' has become a proverb. Who has not tried to dislodge him and failed? Once aware of some assault on him, he clings with unmuvabie tenacity, it takes a force of nearly two thousand times its own weight to move it when it has made up its mind to stay. The limpet's one aim seems to be security, its cone-liko form assists security. Offering no resistance, it resists everything; wildest waves, heaviest storms, bringit no fear. Shielded by its strong armour-plate, 't outrides the storm. Whether the waves come along rippling with laughter or roaring with anger, it is safely anchored on the rock. Tho rocks on which the limpets make their home are often so covered with barnacles that it is difficult for the foot to obtain a firm hold. So a limpet always chooses a definite spot,

and keeps to it. That is its home, a place smooth and round like a shell, and often, slightly sunk in the rock through the friction caused by the shell’s edge. If the positions of limpets on a rock are marked and numbered and you return when the tide is out, you will find that Mr and Mrs Limpet are not at home. They are out on a foodhunting expedition. For they feed on minute algso or seaweeds found on rocks between the tide-marks. Their feeding time is when the tide is out. After wandering some distance, not more than a few feet from their homes, they return to the self-same spots on the self-same rocks. And if limpctsaro marked to correspond to the positions they originally occupied, it will be found that each has come> back to its own place. They know their homes on the rock almost as well as we know the number of the house we live in. Much is heard of the homing instinct of birds, but this faculty of the tiny less-developed creatures _ like the snail and the limpet for finding their way home, is almost more wonderful. How it is done we do not know. It is not, apparently, by sight or smell. It may be by the sense of touch, for a large limpet has some three hundred tentacles that it spreads round its shell as it crawls.