MOLLUSCA — THEIR TIMES OF FEEDING. 337 



me and several other friends to pass those days with him. 

 When we were at supper there, a large quantity of oysters 

 was brought from Rome ; but when they were set before 

 us, they proved, though many, yet all poor and thin. The 

 moon (remarked Annianus) is now in truth waning ; and on 

 that account the oyster, like other things, is lean and void 

 of juice. We asked what other things waste when the moon 

 is old ? Do not you remember (said he) what Lucilius 

 says ? — 



' Luna alit ostrea, et implet echinos, maribu' fibras 

 Et pecui addit.' 



Those very things which grow with the moon's increase pine 

 away as it wanes : the eyes of cats also become fuller or 

 smaller according to the changes of the moon. But that 

 is still more surprising which I have read in Plutarch, — 

 that the onion becomes green and flourishing as the moon 

 wastes away, and dries up again while the moon increases : 

 and this is the cause, say the Egyptian priests, why the 

 Pelusians do not eat the onion ; because it alone of all pot- 

 herbs has its turns of diminishing and increasing contrary 

 to those of the moon."* This opinion continued to be for 

 long a part of the popular creed, and even so late as 1666 

 it had in nothing been impaired, for, in the " Philosophical 

 Transactions" of that year, travellers to India are solicited 

 to inquire, " whether those shell-fishes that are in these parts 

 plump and in season at the full moon, and lean and out of 

 season at the new, are found to have contrary constitutions 

 in the East Indies:" — a nice question, to which the answer 

 returned was, " I find it so here, by experience at Batavia, 

 in oysters and crabs." -j- To the marine zoophaga there are 

 probably no set hours or seasons, and I do not see why it 



* Kirckringius "knew a young gentlewoman whose beauty depended 

 upon the lunar force ; insomuch, that at full moon she was plump and hand- 

 some, but in the decrease of the planet so wan and ill-favoured, that she 

 was ashamed to go abroad, till the return of the new moon gradually 

 gave fulness to her face, and attraction to her charms. If this seems 

 strange, it is indeed no more than an influence of the same kind with that 

 which the moon has always been observed to have upon shellfish, and some 

 other living creatures ; for, as the old Latin poet Lucilius says, 



' Luna alit ostrea, et implet echinos, maribu' fibras 

 Et pecui addit.' 



And after him, Mauilius : — 



' Si submersa fretis, concharum et carcere clausa, 

 Ad lunse motum variant animalia corpus.' " — Dr. Mead. 



t Sprat's Hist. R. Soc. p. 161. 



