THE OYSTER. 65 



parts. They are nothing but breathing organs, and 

 are simple finger-like tentacles which hang down into 

 the water. There is no gill-current as there is in the 

 adult, and the young oyster must find its own food by 

 swimming through the water. Its two shells are also 

 exactly alike, and therefore quite different from those 

 of the adult. 



The ^^% therefore tends, at first, to build up an 

 animal which differs greatly from the adult, in struc- 

 ture as well as in habits, and naturalists believe, as I 

 have already said, that our modern oysters are the 

 descendants of an ancient form which was not seden- 

 tary, and the ^^% at first exhibits a decided tendency 

 to build up this ancestor rather than an oyster. 



Some of you may ask how we know that the remote 

 ancestors of the oyster were different from modern 

 oysters. This is a fair question, and I will try to give 

 an outline of the reasons for this opinion, and perhaps 

 an illustration may help us. 



When a Baltimorean visits New York or Savannah 

 or Boston or Chicago, he finds that while the people 

 of these cities talk the same language, it is with a 

 difference. They all talk what they call English, but 

 when an Englishman comes among us he tells us 

 that it is not English, and it is quite clear to an 

 American who visits England that the people there do 

 not know how to talk United States, although the 

 differences are trivial ones, of accent and idiom, and 

 do not in the least hinder conversation. 



If, however, we cross the narrow strip of water 

 which separates England from the German empire, we 

 find a strange language, which at first seems totally 



