194 
scallop suddenly lift himself from the 
belittered bottom, and go by little con- 
vulsive jerks to another place a few 
feet off. Yes; the object which seemed 
so helpless and inanimate, almost like 
a stone, will actually rise up and swim! 
By opening and shutting his bivalves 
quickly, he inspires and expels the air 
from the membrane which joins the 
two in such a way that he can propel 
himself through the water clear of the 
ground. I suppose he knows why he 
wishes to change his position, but how 
can he tell when and where to go with his 
shell shut ? or does he take the chances, 
happy-go-lucky, where he may land ? 
One cannot always tell for certain 
which are sentient living creatures, and 
which are inorganic and inanimate. 
Here, for instance, is a cluster of tubes 
like hollow stalks or reeds cut off six 
inches above the ground, and filled 
with water. Keep quiet for a while 
and blossoms of exquisite purple will 
begin to’protrude from every one, and 
finally mature into a perfect bloom. It 
is like magic so to see things grow 
apace! We think they are natural flow- 
ers, but they are only senseless and slimy 
mollusks, capital for fish bait and agree- 
able for the table, and the purple fin- 
gers are their gills. So also one picks 
up rough substances like bits of rocks, 
and lo! they are coral insects in their 
cases, soft and juicy; or he finds on 
The American Angler 
strings of seaweed little bulbs like ber- 
ries, which perchance are eg ¢’s of fishes. 
In wet caves, arched and smoothed by 
churning waves, are star fish of many 
hues and fingers—five, eight, ten, six- 
teen and even twenty-two of them,— 
and decapods, and cephalopods, and all 
the tribes of sepia and cuttle fish, some- 
times growing to gigantic size, creatures 
such as we used to think were mere 
fictions of gross fable, but are terrible 
realities, but seldom seen. And yet 
the little ones, only a few inches long, 
perhaps, have all the villainous at- 
tributes of their superior race—malic- 
ious eyes aflame and yearning tentacles 
which seem to shrink while momentarily 
alert to fling out their execrable clasp 
upon the wrist or arm. And there are 
inkfish which, in their natural element, 
eject a liquid cloud to befog their pur- 
suers or blind their victims—double- 
dyed scamps who advance backward, 
by jerks, and look one way when they 
are going the opposite. And on every 
landwash, when the tide is out, are 
stranded jelly-fish, limp and flabby, 
which blister where they touch the 
flesh and beautiful medusz with stings 
like nettles, and great black sea-spiders, 
ugly but harmless, and sharks’ eggs 
which looks like leather wallets! And 
there are lots of things. 
How strange the marvels: which the 
ebbing tide reveals! 
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