THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE OYSTER. 165 



seems disposed to favor such a view. However, I believe all the proof 

 as yet is on the side of its being a process, an organ, so to speak. 

 Now, there are a good many of these bird-heads in the community, 

 and very useful things they are. Let an animalcule too large for 

 prey come fooling around these little Bryozoa, and one of the bird- 

 heads will give it a nip such as to make a second one unnecessary. 

 But these Bryozoa are in danger of being cloyed with dirt. These 

 bird heads, like so many ants, pick off the annoyance. Is not all this 



Fig. 5. Anatomt of a Brtozoon. 1, the skeleton cells ; 2. diagram of an individual Bryo- 

 zoon ; a, the region of the moulh surmounted by a crown or tuft of tentacles ; 3, an avicula- 

 rium, or bird's-head process. 



pretty? And it is quite ludicrous, too. And why should not Nature 

 like a wee bit of drollery now and then ? 



If a pile of oysters be examined soon after leaving the water, es- 

 pecially if taken off a pretty clean bottom, a number of specks, about 

 a quarter of an inch in width, may be seen adhering to the oyster, 

 chiefly the upper side. They look like grease-spots, or small lamps 

 of jelly. They are little sea-anemones, collapsed and dead. Alive 

 in the water these are pretty objects, having a disk of a flower-form, 

 with an orifice in the centre which opens into the animal's stomach, 

 and which is really its mouth. (See Fig. 8). Such, then, is something 

 of the oyster's environment. With such surroundings, so much of 

 beauty, with a spice of Nature's humoi", just enough to make this 

 beauty true and pure, on the principle that a person is known by the 

 company he keeps, the oyster might be set down as an individual of 

 refined tastes. 



Something should be said of the oyster's most intimate and famil- 

 iar friend, a certain dapper little fellow in a scarlet jacket with trim- 

 mings of gold. From its size and form it is sometimes called the pea- 

 crab ; but, from the fact that it is only found in the oyster, it is gener- 



