68 GLAUCUS; OR, 



of nearly four inches, striking with its point against 

 any opposing object, and sending the whole shell 

 backwards with a jerk. The point, yon see, is 

 sharp and tongue-like ; only flattened, not hori- 

 zontally, like a tongue, but perpendicularly, so as 

 to form, as it was intended, a perfect sand-plough, 

 by which the animal can move at will, either above 

 or below the surface of the sand.* 



But for colour and shape, to what shall we 

 compare it ? To polished cornelian, says Mr. Gosse. 

 I say, to one of the great red capsicums which 

 hang drying in every Covent-garden seedsman's 

 window. Yet is either simile better than the guess 

 of a certain Countess, who, entering a room wherein 

 a couple of Cardium Tuberculatum were waltzing 

 about a plate, exclaimed, "Oh dear! I always 

 heard that my pretty red coral came out of a fish, 

 and here it is all alive ! " 



* If any inland reader wislies to see the action of this foot in 

 the bivalve Molluscs, let him look at the Common Pond-Mussel 

 (Anodon Cygneus), which he will find in most stagnant waters, and 

 see how he burrows with it in the mud, and how, when the water 

 is drawn off, he walks solemnly into deeper water, leaving a furrow 

 behind him. 



