68 THE OYSTER. 



more and more; but if we are thus impressed by the 

 study of a complicated mechanism, adapted for bring- 

 ing about complicated results, what must be our re- 

 flections when we find in the egg the capacity for pro- 

 ducing the same results without any visible mechanism 

 whatever! Everything which seems so admirable in 

 the adult, when it is the result of organization, exists 

 potentially in the egg, where there is no discoverable 

 organization; and if the result of the process of de- 

 velopment, the complete oyster, is wonderful and in- 

 teresting, how much more wonderful is the process 

 itself. To those who can picture in imagination its 

 hidden structure, an egg is one of the most marvel- 

 lous bodies in the universe. Elsewhere we have com- 

 plex results from complex means, but here we have 

 the most complex of all things, a living body, arising 

 without any visible machinery. 



Even after the cells which result from the multipli- 

 cation of the egg cell become pretty numerous and 

 begin to shape themselves into a complicated body, 

 this at first bears no close resemblance to an oyster, 

 and while the ultimate outcome is an oyster like the 

 parent, I should give my readers a very incomplete 

 and erroneous picture of the history of its develop- 

 ment if I did not lay stress upon the very remarkable 

 fact that this result is not reached directly. 



The mature oyster is a sedentary animal with no 

 power of locomotion. It lies on its side, soldered to 

 the bottom by the outside of the deep spoon-shaped 

 left shell, for which the flat right shell forms a mova- 



