300 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



With fine scissors I snip off a delicate slice of the so-called 

 " beard " which constitutes the oyster's gills ; and this slice 

 I place on a glass slip, covering it with a thin glass disc, 

 and then transferring it to the stage of my microscope. 

 Would that you could see, my friend, the trembling, 

 quivering, glancing life that is thus disclosed. The field 

 of the microscope is occupied by the yellowish translucent 

 material of which the gill is constructed. Across it run a 

 number of closely-set parallel bars, and here and there 

 between the bars is an elongated slit. Each slit is the 

 centre of a little living whirlpool ; for the edges of the bars 

 that bound it carry a vast number of delicate microscopic 

 transparent hairs, which are waving to and fro in ceaseless 

 motion. The waves travel in one direction down one side 

 of the slit, and in the opposite direction up the other side of 

 the slit. Hence the appearance of an elongated living 

 whirlpool. In the eight or ten square inches of gill-surface 

 there must be tens of thousands of these trembling life- 

 whirlpools, all of which, my friend, you suddenly engulf, 

 with a gentle smothered smack of the lips. 



" I suppose," says Professor Huxley, " that when the sapid 

 and slippery morsel which is and is gone, like a flash 

 of gustatory summer lightning glides along the palate, 

 few people imagine that they are swallowing a piece of 

 machinery (and going machinery too) greatly more com- 

 plicated than a watch." 



In the paper from which I quote these words (Eng. III. 

 Mag., Oct. 1883), Professor Huxley describes in some 

 detail the anatomy of the oyster. Thither let the reader 

 repair, if so he will, for an account of the same. All that 

 I propose to do here is to say a few words, suitable for 

 those who do not like to be altogether ignorant of such 

 matters, but have neither the time nor the inclination to 

 be fully instructed, on the life-history of the oyster from 



