Speaking of shells in bottles (hope I didn't already post this, I'm not sure)
. . . In the childrens' building of the hospital where I work there is a long,
well-lighted corridor lined with display cases, where various employees and
other people put their personal collections on loan for a while.  It is sort
of an ever-changing museum for the use of the children and anyone else who
happens along.  I had a shell display there for almost a year.  Anyway, a
couple of weeks ago I walked through there, and one display that caught my eye
was a collection of things found in the ocean over the years by a diver - old
bottles, boat parts, etc.  But two things were of particular interest to me.
One was a series of wierdly malformed quahog (Mercenaria mercenaria) shells.
I've seen thousands of these, but have never seen any like these.  Flattened
and twisted, bi-lobed, really strange (wonder where he got them - might be a
good place to stay away from).  The other interesting item was three bottles,
each with a neck perhaps an inch in diameter, and each containing one or more
slipper limpet (Crepidula fornicata) shells about 2 inches in diameter.  The
Crepidula veligers had obviously swum into the bottle through the open neck,
and settled on the inner surface, where they grew to adulthood inside the
bottles.
 
Paul Monfils