68 THE OYSTER. 



more and more ; but if we are thus impressed by the 

 study of a complicated mechanism, adapted for bring- 

 ing about complicated results, what must be our re- 

 flections when we find in the egg the capacity for pro- 

 ducing the same results without any visible mechanism 

 whatever ! Everything which seems so admirable in 

 the adult, when it is the result of organization, exists 

 potentially in the egg, where there is no discoverable 

 organization ; and if the result of the process of de- 

 velopment, the complete oyster, is wonderful and in- 

 teresting, how much more wonderful is the process 

 itself. To those who can picture in imagination its 

 hidden structure, an egg is one of the most marvel- 

 lous bodies in the universe. Elsewhere we have com- 

 plex results from complex means, but here we have 

 the most complex of all things, a living body, arising 

 without any visible machinery. 



Even after the cells which result from the multipli- 

 cation of the egg cell become pretty numerous and 

 begin to shape themselves into a complicated body, 

 this at first bears no close resemblance to an oyster, 

 and while the ultimate outcome is an oyster like the 

 parent, I should give my readers a very incomplete 

 and erroneous picture of the history of its develop- 

 ment if I did not lay stress upon the very remarkable 

 fact that this result is not reached directly. 



The mature oyster is a sedentary animal with no 

 power of locomotion. It lies on its side, soldered to 

 the bottom by the outside of the deep spoon-shaped 

 left shell, for which the flat right shell forms a mova- 



