OYSTERS, AND ALL ABOUT THEM. 



while the portion of the life committed to each lasts, the 

 body performs its wondrous functions." 



The sketch now given of the wonders of an oyster- 

 shell, would be wanting in one interesting particular, if no 

 notice were taken of the fact that this house of a living 

 creature commonly becomes the residence of a multitude 

 of others. (_/") There, for instance, grow corallines, which 

 certainly have nothing in their appearance, when collapsed 

 and removed from their native element, to attract attention. 

 But only let one of the finest fronds of one called the 

 " sickle beard " be taken and dipped in water, and it will 

 spread out into a beautiful white plume, with rows of cups 

 on the edges of its fibrils, and others about its stem, each 

 cup containing a flower-like head of the animal, whose 

 tentacles collect the food for its support. 



There, too, may be observed little shelly rugged tubes, 

 the dwellings of very different creatures, clustering on 

 oyster as well as other shells, and whatever else may have 

 lain at the bottom of the sea. Beautiful and graceful is 

 the serpula as it issues from its tube, waving its breathing 

 organs of exquisite structure, adorned with the richest tints 

 of yellow, violet, azure, or crimson, before the unassisted 

 eye. Nor less admirable in structure is that little inverted 

 cone-like body, to open and close the tube, which is 

 pushed out of the way of the organs of respiration. 



But to give only another instance of this kind, it may 

 be stated that Professor Allman, a very vigilant and careful 



(f) "Innumerable other animals, sponges, corallines, polypes, 

 tunicates, other bivalve molluscs, especially mussels and cockles, live in 

 the same way and abound on oyster beds, often attached to the shells 

 of the oysters. Professor Mobius counted as many as 221 distinct 

 animals of various species on one oyster shell." Professor Huxley, on 

 the Oyster. 



