I Q2 OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



Though the Heralds' College contains immense and 

 diversified records of the past, it has no vellum or parch- 

 ment-roll relating to the silver-shell (oyster) family. And 

 yet it is to be traced to a period so remote as to eclipse 

 the ancestry of Britain's proudest peer. It may be well to 

 take a rapid glance at its high descent. 



Some of the theorists of the last century considered 

 the earth to have been primarily a perfect mathematical 

 sphere, without seas or islands, without valley, rock, or 

 mountain, and therefore, as having "neither wrinkle, scar, 

 nor fracture." 



They did not perceive that what they deemed defor- 

 mity was actually beauty, and no less conducive to the 

 greatest utility. We owe our springs of water, our rivers, 

 the stone and lime of our buildings, the metals so essential 

 to arts and manufactures, the purity and salubriousness of 

 our atmosphere, and the abundance of vegetable and 

 animal life, to the condition in which we find the earth. 

 Its crust, so to speak, consists of some thirty or forty strata 

 of various thickness, spread out one over the other, resem- 

 bling as many volumes piled on their flat sides, and yet 

 arranging themselves into a very few grand groups. 



The whole set, indeed, is nowhere displayed lying 

 each on the other ; yet their order of succession is sure 

 and known, so that, while some are wanting in every loca- 

 lity, the order of position is never violated. 



Still further : the strata do not lie over each other like 

 the coats of an onion or of a bulbous root, but have been 

 correctly compared to a vast number of wafers, irregularly 

 formed, laid on a globe, patched upon each other in dif- 

 ferent sets as to thickness, and variously under -passing, 

 out-cropping, and over-lapping. 



