48 THE OYSTER. 



we like, translate into a pleasant or agreeable cake; the shell, 

 it will be seen, is round like a cake, and its smoothness and 

 regularity of form render it agreeable to look upon; this species 

 too comes from the Indian Seas, where it is taken on sandy- 

 bottoms. The American Spiny Oyster, or Spondijliis Americanus, 





brings us into another family, that of the Water Clams, called 

 by naturalists Spondylidid; with the spines stuck out every 

 way, and no way in particular, it looks like a head of hair 

 greatly in need of the assistance of one of its pectinated 

 relatives. The specific name of this curious shell explains 

 itself; the generic name comes from the Latin Spondijlis — 

 a kind of serpent. 



Passing over the family Malleidce, or TTammer Oysters, we 

 come to the Meleagrijiidce, or Pearl Oysters, of which Pig. 1, 

 Plate VIII, is an example, this is the M. Ifargaritifera of 

 naturalists, the mollusk in whose shells pearls are chiefly found. 

 Here are two long words; Meleagris is the Latin for a Guinea 

 or Turkey Hen, to the markings of whose plumage naturalists 

 might have imagined the shells of this genus bore some re- 

 semblance. There was, says the mythology, a celebrated hero 

 of antiquity named Meleaga, but we can hardly suppose that 

 there is any association between his name and that of a genus 

 of Oysters, of which edible we read the ancients were very 

 fond, and they are said to have had a fancy not onlj^ for the 

 mollusk itself, but also for the pearls found in its shell, which 

 at their luxurious banquets they dissolved in wine, to make 

 the draughts richer, or at all events more expensive; and this 



