animal standing on its head in a small dark shell! Now and then it casts
its coat (like the Crab and Shrimp). The old coat is rolled up and
thrown away outside the door.
Now comes the strangest thing of all. As a baby, the Barnacle is a free
swimming creature. It has three pairs of legs, a tail, a useful mouth,
and one eye. After kicking about in the sea for some time, and changing
its skin, it changes its shape entirely. It now looks more like a tiny
mussel. It has two little "shells," two eyes, legs, and feelers. Now its
swimming days are nearly over, and it must settle down. It gives up
eating, and roves about looking and feeling for a place to settle on.
Finding a suitable spot, the little animal stands on its head. Then a
kind of glue is formed, which fixes it for life to that place, head
down. The two shells and the two eyes are now thrown off. The Barnacle
quickly builds up a shelly house, and, after a life of adventure and
change, becomes a fixed Barnacle for the rest of its days.
For many years people knew little of this strange animal. All its
wonderful changes, and the way its body is made, tell us plainly that
the Barnacle is actually first cousin to the Crab, Lobster, Shrimp and
Prawn! It belongs to the class known as the _Crustacea_; but, for some
reason or other, it has chosen to live its grown-up life fixed to a
rock.
EXERCISES
1. How does the Shrimp swim?
2. Of what use are Shrimps and Prawns in the sea?
3. How can you tell a live Shrimp from a live Prawn?
4. How does the Barnacle obtain its food?
5. Give the names of five crustaceans.
LESSON VI.
PLANTS OF THE SHORE.
To pick a bunch of gay flowers you would look in the fields and
hedge-rows, and not by the sea. Flowers, as you know, love moist soil,
and not dry sand; and, like us, they prefer one food to another. Sand
they do not like, and salt is a poison to them. Both of these are
enemies to plant life.
Also, flowers choose sheltered spots. They do not like rough winds, and
the glare of the sun shrivels them up. Yet there are plants with pretty
flowers to be found by the sea, and many others with small, dull
flowers. These seaside plants have to fight for their lives. The dry,
shifting sand, and the salt spray, are enough to kill them, you would
think. They have no shelter from the strong sea wind, nor from the
fierce glare of the summer sun. The puzzle is, how do they live among so
many enemies? For you know th
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