Wisconsin School of the Air; Afield with Ranger Mac; 19

It's 9:30. The Wisconsin School of the air invites you to go a field with a ranger mech today boys and girls range America's going to tell you about making buttons from the shelves. Now here's your guide for today's imaginary trip down the nature trail Ranger MK. This is your day boys and girls so up on the way. Whenever Wherever there is water there life is most abundant. Are brooks and rivers ponds and lakes have a great variety of life. And beneath the surface of the water. The struggle to live to get food to survive is more intense than it is on the land. Some of these water creatures have been given by nature the most unusual even grotesque forms. And there are ways of getting along in life. Fill us with wonder. One of these is the muscle M U S S E L commonly called the clam.

Surely every trader had or has at some time handled a clam shell and which is half the house which the clam creates for itself. Maybe you have seen the shallow peril and the twists and turns on the sandy bottom of a river or lake. Maybe you follow that furrow to the end and there found a something that had the color of a Mars covered rock. Maybe your curiosity prompted you to pick it up. If you did pick it up at that it was a squirt of water a pink tongue quickly drawn in two halves clamped tightly together and you held in your hand a muscle a clam. We will call it a clam from now on. Maybe you looked at it curiously and you said to yourself. That's a funny way for a creature to live carrying its house on its back wherever it

goes. Maybe you wondered how such curious creatures are born into this world. How do they eat and put all the light must have food. How do they breathe. But all life must have oxygen. How do they travel. For they seem to have no feet. At least when the house is closed. Can other creatures prey upon them. When they are so well protected by a heavy armor. Has man found any use he can make of them. The show is made up of two parts and each part is called a valve and that's what we will call them this morning valve. The V these vows are hinged at the back by strong ligaments that are somewhat elastic. RIKOON Zend and muskrats find the pressure of clams a great delicacy at

some time in the long history of these animals. Each one discovered the weak spot in the armor of the clam and they taught it to their children and now it is a part of their racial manner of getting a living. Scattered piles of shells along river courses and on Lake banks are a sure indication that either one or the other of these animals has tested at these spots. One summer I pitched my tent on Jordan Lake Wisconsin. Within sight of a muskrat raft. Essentially away from the shore among the bullrushes. The muskrats built a raft out of these reeds and they brought the clamps to it. And on top of the raft open the shells and peace did. I could watch them from the open door of the tent. The shells were built from within

by the creatures. The material is largely light I am taken from the water where it is in solution. Add to this some see Christians of the body are added at this interior decoration of the clam of the clams home. It is called naked. Are mother of pearl. It is beautiful and smooth as anything can possibly be. With our freshwater clams the color of this interior is pearly white. As the creature grows in size it adds to the size of the shell. If you take a piece of the shell and put it in vinegar bubbles will rise from it and the shell will gradually dissolve at once in a while a round smooth piece of mother of pearl is found in the flesh of a clam. It is called a pearl.

Sometimes a grain of sand or a small parasite gets into the shell and maybe it causes pain to the creature. The same as a suspect in our eye causes us pain and the clam cannot expel it. So the clam cuts the include air and with mother of pearl of the same kind of material that goes into the shell. Now the pearl is moved and some of them are perfectly round. They are made SOL. This is done so that. The. So that this include air will not irritate the flesh of the creature. This is how and why pearls are made. Perfectly round pearls with a beautiful us there are rare and expensive and one taken from the Wabash River. A number of years ago sold for as high as to a thousand dollars. The

Japanese have a trick and they have a trick of inserting a parasite into the shell of the clam in order to get more pearls. At the interior of the shell is lined with a delicate membrane called a mantle m a n t l e as the creature grows. This mantle adds to the size of the shell just as the cambium of the tree and to the size of the tree and this mantle gives off a secretion also that covers the outside of the shell with a thick horny black skin. This skin protects the shell on the outside from being dissolved by the acids and that most water contains in limited amounts. You notice that the shell has ridges on the outside. These ridges are made by periods of rapid growth of the creature with him. The

grooves between the ridges are the resting periods and these are about the same as the annual rings on the tree. You see the interior of the shell is filled with organs that are about the same as any animal has a mouth a soft against stomach intestines liver heart kidneys blood to carry food and oxygen to all parts of the body and to carry the waste products to the gills and kidneys. Just the same as in our bodies except we have lungs instead of gills. And the creature has strong muscles. M us e l e s muscles the organs that cause moving you know muscles that are attached to certain areas on the shelves the same as the muscles are attached to the bones in our body. These muscles open and close the valves of the shelves. They cause a suction the pulls water

into the body of the clam through a tube that is located at the back side of the body. Now this water passes over the gills and oxygen is taken from it just in case of the pish then it passes over the mouth. And microscopic plants and animals are taken into the body as food. Now this boot goes through the same processes of digestion as in any creature. To punish the needed energy and the material for growth. Now the clam is a rather slow traveller and when the clam walks it walks with the hinge side up and stands on the edges of the piles. It does not have feet and legs like other animals but it has a port that port is a soft shapeless part of the body and not widely different from the shape of our tongue

which the creature pushes out between the valves of the shell and this piece of flesh called of what hugs the sandy bottom. And by a pushing motion forces the shell over the sand leaving a pearl behind it is a slow poke you see. Slow but sure. Clams could not exist were it not for fish. The clams live on the blood of fish during their early lives. Let's see what happens. Clams hatch from eggs. And the eggs are pretty lies in the fall or in August. But they live in the mother all winter and during the winter they develop enough to have two dials. There are a very small 100 wouldn't cover a penny. They're very delicate valves but useful

ones as we shall see in the spring. The mother expels the arm by opening and closing these valves at the young can propel themselves by Jet Propulsion in a short time. They clamp onto a piece. Here they grow for about 12 weeks sucking their food from the body of the fish. They are parasites. You see for a time the fish develop sores where these young clams are attached and during that time we call the fish wormy and we don't like to eat them. At the end of 12 weeks the clams have developed well enough to take care of themselves so they break loose and care for themselves. From that time on Rich Man Poor Man beggar man the doctor lawyer merchant chief. So girls back in grandmother's day told fortunes by means of buttons and

those buttons may have been pearl buttons made from the shelves of clams. The mother of pearl. They button industry used to be a great industry now but it has dwindled in recent years because buttons are made from so many different kinds of materials. Glass stone plastics wood bench table ivory dried blood and many others. But the main reason for the lessening of the pearl button industry is the pollution of the water. Both fish and mussels die with water pollution and the Mississippi River and its tributaries have long been the greatest source of freshwater clams in the world from Muscatine Iowa up the river and up many of the tributaries piles of shells could be seen near the villages and cities ready to ship to button factories. The clams are pushed by dragging hooks along the

bottom of the river. The clams feed there and the valves are open. The hooks enter the open valves and the clams close down on them. The clams are then boiled to remove the pressure in the interior and the horny exterior the flesh is dried and mixed with corn meal part chickenfeed. The shells are sent to a button factory where round discs are stamped out by special machines. These discs are cut to a desired size and polish. After holes are drilled through them. They are sold on cards and are ready to be sewed on the garments of Rich Man Poor Man beggar man the doctor lawyer merchant chief. Mussel Shoals a rapids in the Tennessee River where the Tennessee Valley Authority dam is built. The TVA.

Was named because of the abundance of mussels and USSC ls. Of clams that use the shoals as feeding grounds. The spelling is the name is spelled m u s e l e.. Muscle Shoals about the two words and us the alley and them us S. yell are often interchanged and so we learned today that the lowly clam has a place in our lives and that nature has many curer ways of taking care of her creatures. Good bye until we meet again on the trail next week. May these intervening days be full of sunshine for you. Even more are made of the Great Spirit put sunshine in your heart for evermore are much the familiar Indian fur world brings us to the end of another trip a field where the Ranger may act. He will be back again next week to take you on another radio hike down the nature trail. This

is the Wisconsin School of the year.