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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



self, stomach -first, into a partially-opened writing-desk, he would 

 rival this feat of the sea-star, without the villainy of injecting chloro- 

 form through the key-hole. 



But the oyster race has one foe more formidable than all the rest 

 one who invades their ancient waters with iron implements and hun- 

 gry fleets who brings to his service the appliances of a high intelli- 

 gence, and the impulsion of an imperious necessity who, after the 

 strictest rulings of the old barbaric cannibals, assigns the adult cap- 

 tives to immediate immolation, and reserves the young to be grown 

 and fed for a future feast. And everybody eats the poor oyster 



Fig. 8. Sea-Anemones. 



prince and peasant the healthy and the sick ; even he who is paying 

 the penalty of long defiance to a stern physical law, and to whom all 

 food is suggestive of torture, thinks he might stand an oyster or two. 

 The rollicking student, brimming full of frolic and swagger, emerging 

 from his day's course on the humanities, fancies that oysters make a 

 good dessert after such dry pabulum. In fact, he holds the bivalves 

 in so high esteem that he informs " Chum," sentimentally, of course, 

 that he thinks oysters should be called pabula amoris, and proposes a 

 dozen each on the half-shell. So the saloon-man prepares for the im- 

 molation. With the implement of his calling he taps at the passage- 

 way, " The gate's ajar." Treachery ! The iron enters the soul ! Chum 

 takes the initiative. The mollusk approaches the lips and it is gone ! 

 There is a gleam in Chum's eye a flash ecstatic ; it is the light of 

 genius satisfied. " Tom, it is the elixir of the gods solidified ! How 

 it went down like a chunk of bliss ! Facills descensus Averm" 



It is a pity that candor should compel one to seem to spoil this fine 

 Roman sentiment by quoting Roman practice. But we cannot cover 

 up history ; and we are the less willing to do so, because we are about 

 to cite transactions that will prove the great wrongs suffered by Os- 

 trea, for so these Romans called our oyster. The chroniclers tell that 



