290 card i id.*:. 



variableness of the cockle-shell. No specimens are 

 alike. I have amused myself at the seaside in looking 

 over a basketful of them, with a view of finding two 

 exactly similar ; but I have never succeeded. They may 

 be distinguished one from another, like men, sheep, or 

 dogs. Ruskin has the following apposite remark, in his 

 ' Modern Painters/ as to what he terms ' ' the truths of 

 nature." He says that they " are one eternal change — 

 one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of 

 the globe like another bush : there are no two trees in 

 the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, 

 nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told 

 one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly 

 alike/' This is an eloquent and suggestive truth. Lu- 

 cretius had long ago illustrated the same idea by in- 

 stances drawn from the animal kingdom, in which he 

 includes " concharumque genus." 



The good qualities of this shell-fish as an article of 

 food are notorious. The ancients appear to have been 

 in the habit of roasting them, if we believe that they are 

 the subject of one of iEsop's fables, in which the son of 

 a husbandman thus apostrophizes some he cooked in 

 this way, and which were fizzing in the fire : " O most 

 wicked creatures, are you singing, while your houses 

 are being burnt ?" A schoolboy thinks the true moral 

 of this fable ought to be, " add insult to injury," instead 

 of " every thing in its season." Lister mentions that in 

 his time cockles were eaten raw, as well as cooked ; and 

 Fleming and Macgillivray notice the same custom as 

 prevalent in Scotland. They are also pickled like oys- 

 ters, and a " vol-au-vent aux bucardes " is by no means 

 a despicable " plat." Mace says that the Bretons call 

 them "Coques," a name also applied to one or more 

 species of Tapes. Cockle-gathering is a useful, though 



