THE SHELLS OF THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA. 211 



of the mighty Father places what to him is the choicest food before 

 his very mouth. He does not cry and suffer hunger like the young 

 lions, but, like some mentioned in the Scriptures, he does not want any 

 good thing. He has the pleasures of childhood, of youth, and of 

 mature life. He emerges from the maternal egg, and finds himself 

 swimming about in the mighty ocean. He lies in his transparent 

 cradle, like the hollow of two fair)* hands joined together to nurse the 

 little strai^ger, and enjoys the opening and shutting of his tiny valves 

 as much as any infant catching at the moon. His mother's rest is 

 disturbed by no plaintive wail, nor is her life shortened by minister- 

 ing to its diseased wants. Our little Gastrochama sails on in the 

 ocean of life with a literal placidity, realizing the most perfect descrip- 

 tions of the novelist or the sweetest dreams of the sleeping child. The 

 clairvoyant is said to have his eye-sense diffused over the membranes 

 of his body; so does our infant see with the tissues of the fairy mantle 

 in which he lies enveloped. No storms ruffle the tranquillity of his 

 temper; no sudden frost cuts off his early bloom. He breathes, he eats, 

 and performs all the other functions of life, as it were, unconsciously, 

 simply happy in being alive. How the Lord has filled that mighty 

 purifier which covers three-fourths of the surface of our globe, even 

 in the darkness of its depths, with life and enjoyment! But the happy 

 days of childhood are crowded into a few short hours; fulfil their term, 

 and pass. Ah, young Gastroclnena, thou art tired so soon of freedom? 

 Like the slave foolishly tempted away from his master under the 

 glittering idea of liberty, thou hast tired of that bauble, and art going 

 back, a willing captive till thy death ? ' ' Not so, ' ' answer the instincts 

 that have been slumbering in that transparent form; "but I have a 

 purpose to fulfil in life; I must work." And pray what art thou going 

 to do, thou tiny living skin ? "I must dig; I must riddle out those 

 living rocks that are growing up beneath me, and threaten to choke 

 up the very channels of the harbor. But for me and such as I, even 

 man may hereafter be stopped in the mighty works which he carries 

 on in the divine image. But for me and such as I, his vessels, fraught 

 with the material uses of his fellows, and with the evangelists of 

 eternal truth, would be wrecked on sunken rocks where his charts 

 described old soundings of sufficient depth." Thy idea is grand, 

 thou floating jelly; but how wilt thou accomplish these great things? 

 "He that implanted such ideas within me, will He not work through 

 me. and enable even my frail substance to accomplish the allotted 

 portion of the task? I must dig. Behold my foot!" 



As we look through the glass in our aquarium (that is to be, when 

 the school of seience is established on the shores of the sea of Cortex, ) 

 and see the tiny creature turning towards us the wide pear-shaped 

 opening in its furrowed valves, and from a chink in the protecting 

 mantle protrude a still more tiny, finger-like organ, calling it its 

 "foot," the unbeliever might be tempted to scoff, and even the 

 reverent student of nature to doubt its powers. But our infant 

 Gastrocheena pays no heed, -and steadily sets himself to fulfil his mis- 

 sion. Being heartily tired of a mere sportive existence — well enough, 



