914 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



All molluscs are instances of that beneficent law of nature, 

 that the hard parts accommodate themselves to the soft. 

 The common naked snail, the mussel, cockle, oyster, 

 garden helix, strombus, and nautilus, elegant or rough, 

 rare or common, each illustrate this grand law. The 

 body of a soft consistence is enclosed in an elastic skin. 

 From this skin calcareous matter is continually exuded. 

 This protects the animal, and forms the shell. Where the 

 waves are rough and rocks superabundant, then the shell 

 is rough, hard, stony, fit to weather anything ; where only 

 smooth water and halcyon days are to be looked for, 

 Nature, which never works in vain, provides but paper 

 sides and an egg-shell boat, such as the little nautilus 

 navigates and tacks and steers in. 



Besides forming the rousrh outside, the calcareous 





exuvium, the mucus of the oyster, and other molluscs, form 

 that beautiful substance, so smooth and polished, and dyed 

 with rainbow tints and a glorious opalescence, which, be 

 it as common as luxury has made it, still charms the eye. 

 This is the lining of the shell, the mother-of-pearl, nacre. 

 " The inside of the shell." said old Dampier that old 

 sailor with a poet's mind " is more glorious even than 

 the pearl itself." 



It is glorious ; it has the look of the morning, and the 

 tint of the evening sky ; the colours of the prism chastened, 

 softened, retained, and made perpetual in it : this is mother- 

 o'-pearl. 



To render its bed always soft and cosy, to lie warm, 

 packed as one might be at Malvern in wet sheets, seems to 

 be the oyster's pleasure. This singular exuvium, this 

 mucus, not only creates pleasure, but alleviates pain. 

 Some irritating substance, some internal worry and annoy- 

 ance, it may be a dead embryo, or a grain of sand insinu- 



