84 THE OYSTER. 



All its beauty, all its grace ? 

 All the honours of its place ? 

 He who pluck' d it fx'om its bed, 

 In the far blue Indian Ocean, 

 Lieth, without life or motion, 

 In his earthy dwelling — dead ! 

 All his children, one by one. 

 When they look up to the sun, 

 Curse the toil by which he drew 

 The treasure from its bed of blue." 



Costly as pearls are, they are merely the calcareous 

 production of Mollusks. Diamonds have elsewhere 

 been shown to he merely charcoal; the pearl is little 

 else but concentric layers of membrane and carbonate 

 of lime. All Mollusks are instances of that beneficent 

 law of nature, that the hard parts accommodate them- 

 selves to the soft. The common naked snail, the 

 mussel, cockle, oyster, garden helix, strombus, and 

 nautilus, elegant or rough, rare or common, each illus- 

 trate this grand law. The body of a soft consistence 

 is enclosed in an elastic skin. From this skin cal- 

 careous matter is continually exuded. This protects 

 the animal, and forms the shell. Where the waves are 

 rough, and rocks superabundant, then the shell is 

 rough, hard, stony, fit to weather anything; where 

 only smooth water and halcyon days are to be looked 

 for, Nature, which never works in vain, provides but 

 paper sides and an egg-shell boat, such as the little 

 nautilus navigates and tacks and steers in. 



Besides forming the rough outside, the calcareous 

 exuvium, the mucus of the oyster, and other moUusks, 

 form that beautiful substance, so smooth and polished. 



I 



