66 GLAUCUS ; OR, 



cliffs of the Eiviera. Eare in every other shore, 

 even in the west, it abounds in Torbay at certain, 

 or rather -uncertain times, 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 ; a seeming 

 waste of life, which would be awful in our eyes, 

 were not the Divine Euler, as His custom 

 is, making this destruction the means of fresh 

 creation, by burying them in the sands, as soon as 

 washed on shore, to fertilize the strata of some 

 future world. It is but a shell-fish truly ; but the 

 great Cuvier thought it remarkable enough to 

 devote to its anatomy elaborate descriptions and 

 drawings, which have done more perhaps than any 

 others to illustrate the curious economy of the 

 whole class of bivalve, or double-shelled, mollusca. 

 (Plate II. Fig. 3.) 



That red capsicum is the foot of the animal 

 contained in the cockle-shell. By its aid it crawls, 

 leaps, and burrows in the sand, where it lies 



