58 GLAUCUS ; OR, 



know as " roaring buckies," these we have seen ; 

 but what, O what, are the red capsicums ? — 



Yes, what arc the red capsicums ? and why 

 are they poking, snapping, starting, crawling, 

 tumbling, wildly over each other, rattling about 

 the huge mahogany cockles, as big as a man's 

 two fists, out of which they are protruded ? 

 Mark them well, for you will perhaps never see 

 them again. They are a Mediterranean species, 

 or rather thi-ee species, left behind upon these 

 extreme southwestern coasts, probably at the 

 vanishing of the same warmer ancient epoch, 

 which clothed the Lizard point with the Cornish 

 heath, and the Killarney mountains with Spanish 

 saxifrages, and other relics of a flora whose home 

 is now the Iberian peninsula, and the sunny 

 cliffs of the Riviera. Eare in every other shore, 

 even in the west, it abounds in Torbay to so 

 prodigious an amount, that the dredge, after 

 five minutes' scrape, will often come up choke 

 full of this great cockle only. You will see tens 

 of thousands of them in every cove for miles 

 this day, and every heavy winter's tide brings 

 up an equal multitude, — a seeming waste of life, 

 which would be awful in our eyes, were not the 

 Divine Ruler, as His custom is, making this 



