United States or Egypt ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The sponge embraces the slender mollusc so maternally that rude yawning is forbidden.
The important thing is to patch up the physical machine. Here with us it is as warm as in midsummer. I hope that you still have the sun down there. Study the life of the mollusc! They are creatures better endowed than one thinks, and, for my part, I should love to take a walk with Georges Pouchet!
Walter, fetch me the cold chisel and hammer which you brought on shore." After the mollusc had been for some time exposed to the fire, he with a few strokes opened it, allowing each half to rest on the piles of stone.
I remember hearing in China that a fresh water mollusc is made to grow pearls by the introduction of foreign bodies within the shell. These produce irritation which the shell fish seeks to allay by depositing around them a layer of pearly matter, and thus pearls are formed.
The sac containing the colouring matter, which is a sort of vein, beginning at the head of the animal, and following the tortuous line of the body as it twists through the spiral shell, was then carefully extracted, either while the mollusc was still alive, or as soon as possible after death, as otherwise the quality of the dye was impaired.
What is his object in thus sponging himself, in dusting and polishing himself so carefully? It is a question, apparently, of removing a few atoms of dust or else some traces of viscidity that remain from the evil contact with the snail. A wash and brush-up is not superfluous when one leaves the tub in which the mollusc has been treated.
Indeed, the larva, of many of the headless Molluscs have a mouth and eyes, and there is a very common type of larva the trochosphere in the Mollusc world which approaches the earlier form of some of the higher worms. The Molluscs, as we shall see, provide some admirable illustrations of the process of evolution.
When the material, distilled in imperceptibly minute portions from the living mollusc, has chemically agglomerated round the original kernel, the pearl is made. The creature having covered the irritant atom with a coating at once hard and smooth, can now endure with equanimity its presence within the shell.
When the doctor offered some to him and Dan, they both declared that the stewed mollusc was quite enough for them.
Each year the secretions of the mollusc would add new concentric circles. I estimated its value at L500,000 at least. After ten minutes Captain Nemo stopped suddenly. I thought he had halted previously to returning. No; by a gesture he bade us crouch beside him in a deep fracture of the rock, his hand pointed to one part of the liquid mass, which I watched attentively.
Word Of The Day