192 MANSUCKERS. 



sure as shooting ; so I cracked up the clam 

 with the butt of my old gun, and bagged the 

 mallard.' 



Any one who has travelled in America must 

 have eaten clam-chowder, or, more probably per- 

 haps, tried to eat it. It is a sort of intermediate 

 affair between stew-proper and soup. How it 

 is made I do not know, but I do know that to 

 my palate it is the vilest concoction I ever tasted ; 

 and I always look upon a man who can eat clam- 

 chowder with a kind of admiration almost akin 

 to envy ; for I feel and know that if he can eat 

 chowder, short of cannibalism he can eat any- 

 thing. I have tried smoked clam, but that I 

 cannot say I enjoy ; it is remarkably like chew- 

 ing good old tarry ropeyarn, and, save the 

 slight difference in nutritive power, about an 

 equally agreeable repast. 



If any of my readers should be curious to see 

 the shells of these monster clams, they will find 

 many I have recently brought home in the Shell 

 Room of the British Museum. 



MANSUCKERS. The three kinds of cuttlefish 

 best known in British seas are, first, the sepia, 

 the creature whose backbone is the ' cuttlefish ' 

 of the apothecaries' shops ; second, the ' loligo,' 

 or ' calamary,' that has a beautiful penlike bone, 



