STORER.

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The Naturalist.

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QUADRUPEDS AND BIRDS FEEDING ON SHELL-FISH.

It is nothing surprising that the different species of walrus, inhabitants of the ocean, should feed partly on shell-fish, but perhaps you would not expect to find among their enemies animals strictly terrestrial.  Yet the oran otang and the preacher monkey often descend to the sea to devour what shell-fish they may find strewed upon the shores.  The former, according to Carreri Gemelli, feed in particular upon a large species of oyster, and fearful of inserting their paws between the open valves, lest the oyster should close and crush them, they first place a tolerably large stone within the shell, and then drag out their victim with safety.  The latter are no less ingenious.  Dampier saw several of them take up oysters from the beach, lay them on a stone, and beat them with another till they demolished the shells.  Wafer observed the monkeys in the island of Gorgonia to proceed in a similar manner; and those of the Cape of Good Hope, if we are to credit La Loubere, perpetually amuse themselves by transporting shells from the shore to the tops of mountains, with the intention undoubtedly of devouring them at leisure.  Even the fox, when pressed by hunger, will deign to eat muscles and other bivalves; and the racoon, whose fur is esteemed by hatters next in value to that of the beaver, when near the shore lives much on them, more particularly on oysters.  We are told that it will watch the opening of the shells, dexterously put in its paw, and tear out the contents.  Not, however, without danger, for sometimes, we are assured, by a sudden closure, the oyster will catch the thief, and detain him until he is drowned by the return of the tide.  The story, I regret to say, appears somewhat apocryphal.

These are amusing facts; the following, to the epicure at least, may be equally interesting.  In some parts of England it is a prevalent and probably a correct opinion, that the shelled-snails contribute much to the fattening of their sheep.  On the hill above Whitsand Bay in Cornwall, and in the south of Devonshire, the Bulimus acutus and the Helix virgata, which are found there in vast profusion, are considered to have this good effect; and it is indeed impossible that the sheep can browse on the short grass of the places just mentioned, without devouring a prodigious quantity of them, especially in the night, or after rain, when the Bulimi and Helices ascend the stunted blades.  “The sweetest mutton,” says Borlase, “is reckoned to be that of the smallest sheep, which feed on the commons where the sands are scarce covered with the green sod, and the grass exceedingly short; such are the towens or sand hillocks in Piran Sand, Gwythien, Philac, and Senangreen, near the Land’s End, and elsewhere in like situations.  From these sands come forth snails of the turbinated kind, but of different species, and all sizes from the adult to the smallest just from the egg; these spread themselves over the plains early in the morning, and, whilst they are in quest of their own food among the dews, yield a most fattening nourishment to the sheep.” (Hist. of Cornwall.)