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Bit by bit the shell is thus added to by the wonderful mantle. Look at a snail's shell, and notice the lines which show how many times the little house has been made larger. Each kind of shell-builder has its own style of building. If you go to a museum and examine the shells gathered from all over the world, you are surprised at their wonderful shapes, markings and colours.
The Snail's shell is like the little boy's suit which is altered and made bigger as the boy grows. The crab's covering is a suit which cannot be altered. It must be thrown away, and replaced by a larger one. The body of the shell-builder is wrapped in a soft covering, a kind of outer coat, which is called the mantle. Now this mantle is one of Nature's cleverest inventions.
Now we will look at a shell-builder, the Whelk, who uses his flinty tongue in quite another fashion. The Whelk does not care for a vegetable dinner. He prefers to eat other molluscs he is carnivorous, a flesh-eater; but these other molluscs do not wait to be eaten. As the enemy draws near they retire into their shells, and shut themselves up as tight as they can.
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