60 OLD OYSTER-SHELL. 



It is common to find on the sands the remains of 

 Oyster-shells, so completely riddled with holes as to pre- 

 sent the aspect of a pearly lacework, merely recalling by 

 its general contour the form of the original shell, but 

 retaining few of its characters. Meeting with such 

 worm-eaten shells, many persons will pass them by 

 without paying the slightest attention, or, at most, will 

 honour them with but a heedless glance. Others may 

 confine their reveries to recollections of oyster suppers. 

 But it is just in proportion as our knowledge of Natural 

 History extends, and as a taste for it exists in the mind, 

 that such an object is capable of interesting us. Simple 

 and common as it appears, a long chapter might be 

 written in merely recording the history of its inhabitant 

 from the time when it lay quietly on its bed among other 

 Oysters, lodged in its firmly-built house, and appearing 

 to defy all intruders, to the present dismantled state of 

 the shell, resembling a ruined fortress, pierced in all 

 directions with cannon shot. The number of enemies 

 which the Oyster meets with, that gradually overcome 

 his defences by mining in his shells, is considerable, not 

 to speak of those who attack him in front : and no 

 doubt the dilapidated example before us is the work of 

 several sets of teeth. His first assailants were proba- 

 bly small sea- worms of the class of Annelides, several 

 kinds of which, some of them of great beauty, may often 

 be seen crawling among Oysters when brought to table. 

 These, boring through the shell, attacked him at all 

 points. At first he resisted their assault by fresh de- 

 positions of pearly matter, interposed between his soft 

 parts and their intruding mouths, and thus pearls were 



