clearly. The valves gape apart some three-quarters of an inch.
The semi-pellucid orange "mantle" fills the intermediate space.
Through that mantle, at the end from which the foot curves, the
siphons protrude; two thick short tubes joined side by side, their
lips fringed with pearly cirri, or fringes; and very beautiful they
are. The larger is always open, taking in the water, which is at
once the animal's food and air, and which, flowing over the
delicate inner surface of the mantle, at once oxygenates its blood,
and fills its stomach with minute particles of decayed organized
matter. The smaller is shut. Wait a minute, and it will open
suddenly and discharge a jet of clear water, which has been robbed,
I suppose, of its oxygen and its organic matter. But, I suppose,
your eyes will be rather attracted by that same scarlet and orange
foot, which is being drawn in and thrust out to a length of nearly
four inches, striking with its point against any opposing object,
and sending the whole shell backwards with a jerk. The point, you
see, is sharp and tongue-like; only flattened, not horizontally,
like a tongue, but perpendicularly, so as to form, as it was
intended, a perfect sand-plough, by which the animal can move at
will, either above or below the surface of the sand. (2)

But for colour and shape, to what shall we compare it? To polished
cornelian, says Mr. Gosse. I say, to one of the great red
capsicums which hang drying in every Covent-garden seedsman's
window. Yet is either simile better than the guess of a certain
lady, who, entering a room wherein a couple of Cardium tuberculatum
were waltzing about a plate, exclaimed, "Oh dear! I always heard
that my pretty red coral came out of a fish, and here it is all
alive!"