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Things to Find Out

Questions from the original Key to the Nature Library to send you back into Shells — and out of doors.

1. What kinds of shells have been used as money?
2. What shells produce the oriental pearls?
3. What shells yield the Baroque, or fresh-water pearls?
4. What shells produce mother-of-pearl?
5. What shells are used in cameo-cutting?
6. What mollusk flies out of the water like a flying-fish?
7. In what part of this country do oysters grow on trees?
8. Where do oysters grow as big as dinner plates, yet tender and delicious?
9. What does the egg ribbon of a giant whelk look like?
10. What mollusk produces an egg mass like a sponge, that sailors use and call a "sea wash-ball"?
11. Tell just how an oyster drill bores the shell of an oyster.
12. What are the so-called "beard" and "heart" of oysters?
13. What shells are made into pearl buttons?
14. Name a mollusk that has red blood.
15. What mollusk may be seen by the acre covering muddy beaches on our east and west coasts?
16. Where do clams attain four feet in breadth, and weigh 500 lbs.?
17. How does the geoduck of Puget Sound rank as an edible clam?
18. What mollusk does serious damage to breakwaters and embankments by boring cavities in the cement work?
19. What are the peculiarities of the coat-of-mail shells?
20. What is the explanation of the row of holes on an abalone shell?
21. How are "sea ears" used on the Channel Islands as a substitute for scarecrows?
22. What commercial importance has the abalone in various countries?
23. Under what circumstances is a sea shell seen climbing a tree?
24. Describe the summer hibernating (aestivation) of tropical land snails.
25. What is the explanation of the so-called "singing shells"?
26. From what mollusks were the ancient "Tyrian dyes" obtained.
27. What mollusk produces sepia ink, and for what purpose?
28. What are the largest mollusks of the snail form?
29. How do the patient Melongena outwit the coon oyster?
30. What large univalve is preyed upon by the same enemy?
31. What is the belief of Scotch children that leads them to apply the empty shell of a triton, or cowrie or a roaring buckie to their ears?
32. What are some of the ways of cooking whelks in Europe?
33. How is the sacred chank shell esteemed and used in the Far East?
34. What shells bring the highest prices?
35. What families are the aristocrats among mollusks?
36. Read the account of the behaviour of conchs alive on the rocky coasts of Florida and the West Indies.
37. What mollusks carry in their shells companions of other living forms?
38. What advantage can be derived by this cooperative arrangement?
39. What snails travel at a gait that is literally a pace?
40. How are the great turban shells used in Scandinavia? In Japan?
41. How is a limpet able to escape hungry crabs and sea birds?
42. What mollusk begins life with a spiral shell, and later changes to another form?
43. What shell suggested to the philosopher, Archimedes, the idea of the screw?
44. What mollusks attach bits of shell and pebbles to their shells to deceive their enemies?
45. What unique means of keeping afloat, protecting its eggs and young, and itself from observation by birds has the pelagic violet snail?
46. Read Charles T. Simpson's account of his adventure with a stranded school of violet snails at Key West.