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clastic asuLstauce as the mantle of the cowry mollusc should be able 

 to lay a pattern on the shell as sharp and defined as a well-executed 

 lithograph. The process is probably very short, and when completed 

 to the satisfaction of the animal, the same mantle which deposited the 

 pattern glazes the whole with a coating of silicious varnish or enamel. 



I have a specimen of Cijprcca mappa which illustrates this process. 

 Just at the juncture when the animal was full grown, and was in the 

 act of painting his house, some hungry crustacean seized the artist 

 between the powerful nippers of his claws, wounding, and no doubt 

 piercing through the mantle, and even leaving the marks of his pincers 

 on the shell. The cowry, however, was too hard a nut to he cracked 

 by the crustacean, who relinquished his hold, and the artist went on 

 painting his house. His poor lacerated mantle, however, could no 

 longer execute the neat sharp pattern with which it was decorating the 

 dwelling, but in the -place of it deposited, under the wound, a large 

 brown blotch. Probably not long after, certainly before the coating of 

 enamel was laid on, the unfortunate cowry fell into the clutches of an 

 enemy more to be dreaded than even the crustacean — a conchologist, 

 a shell-collecting seaman, by whom the specimen was brought to 

 Liverpool. 



When we consider the multitude of colour patterns found in natural 

 productions, animal and vegetable — how varied and distinct they are, 

 how they delight us in the specimens we arrange in our cabinets, form 

 the brightest ornaments of our gardens, and minister to our pleasure in 

 every walk, surely it must awaken surprise that so little has been even 

 attempted in the way of investigating their meaning, or the principles 

 upon which they have been selected and wrought. Shall it be 

 sufficient to say we are c jntent to admire these adornments of nature 

 without prying into her secrets ? As well might we be satisfied with 

 the excuse of an idler who visits a gallery of art, and tells us he is 

 content to look at the pretty pictures, and neither knows or cai-es for 

 anything in them beyond their capability of affording him pleasure. 

 He an admirer ! Why what does he feel of delight, in comparison 

 with that of the student who stands before some chief work of art, 

 struck with an influence much akin to that of awe, not perhaps at the 

 subject of the picture, but at the greatness of the master who could 

 piint it ? What does the idler know of the mind that has been thrown 

 upon the canvass — of the soul that has been breathed into a feature — 

 of the years of high intellectual commuuiug with nature that find 

 expression in a shadow or a gleam ? 



True it is that the Creator has so profusely decked his works with 

 loveliness, and has so wondrously imparted to us the perception of 



