i26 LOCH CRERAti. 



all about the shore, and all had an inkling of the desti- 

 nation of a large proportion of it in an individual of the 

 dog-whelk tribe, that in one case had set itself calmly 

 down to devour the freshly-deposited offspring of the 

 higher class mollusc. 



One unmistakable result of the mild season was the 

 fact that the hermit crabs, whether in barnacle-covered 

 houses of the whelks, or brilliant-zoned Zizyphinus, or 

 rough old dwellings of the buckies, were always in pairs ! 

 Fancy two hermit crabs making love to one another ! 

 They put one more in mind of Diogenes in his tub, 

 or two scolds abusing one another from contiguous 

 cottage doors. We are carefully picking the animals 

 from the interior of some specimen of Zizyphinus, when 

 a poor boiled hermit crab answers the summons of an 

 inserted pin. Ay ! and here is the result of the Gulf 

 stream bringing tropical manners into the sedate winter 

 seas of the North, for you are as well supplied with roe 

 comparatively as the finest berry lobsters ! Sticking here 

 and there about the rocks on the very verge of the lowest 

 tide, are a lot of fine rock oysters, not too close to interfere 

 with one another's dinners, and so all fat, and fresh, and 

 flourishing. The late Frank Buckland started the 

 question as to what side it was natural for the oyster to 

 lie upon whether the concave or flat side should be 

 downmost. No doubt these oysters you find lying free 

 in mud or sand are usually with the flat side downmost, 

 because that is the natural side on to which they would 

 be rolled. But those oysters found sticking to rocks on 

 to which they have attached themselves in their transition 

 state, have invariably the concave side downmost. This 

 is only as one would predicate, because the oyster of our 

 shores, being an inhabitant of the foreshore, and, conse- 



