BOOK OF NATURE LAID OPEN. 12 



CHAP. XII. 



SHELL-FISH. 



11 In shelly armour wrapt, the lobster seeks 

 Safe shelter in some bay, or winding creek ; 

 To rocky chasms the dusky natives cleave, 

 Tenacious hold, nor will the dwelling leave.** 



IF the wonderful productions we have just been 

 contemplating, may be considered as pail of the con- 

 necting link between the vegetable and animal king- 

 doms, the lowest gradation of this species may be 

 accounted that which unites the animal to the fossil 

 class ; but what a prodigious variety of these exist, 

 from the humble oyster, which vegetates in its shell, 

 to the ponderous Tortoise that grazes the aquatic 

 meadow, or the wondrous Lobster, that shoots with 

 rapidity across the gulf 



The Lobster, indeed, may be well styled won- 

 drous. According to Sturm, it is one of the most 

 extraordinary creatures that exists. " An animal, 

 (observes this writer,) whose skin is a shell, and 

 which it casts off every year, to clothe itself with 

 new armour ; an animal, whose flesh is in its tail and 

 legs, and whose hair is in the inside of its breast ; 

 whose stomach is in its head; and which is changed 

 every year for a new one, and which new one be- 

 gins by consuming the old. An animal which carries 

 its eggs within its body, till they become fruitful, 

 and then carries them outwardly under its tail ; an 

 animal which can throw off its legs when they 



