70 GLAUCUS; OE, 



For we can liardly doubt that these prickles are 

 meant as weapons of defence, without which so 

 savoury a morsel as the mollusc within (cooked and 

 eaten largely on some parts of our south coast) 

 would be a staple article of food for sea-beasts of 

 prey. And it is noteworthy, first, that the defensive 

 thorns which are permanent on the two thinner 

 species, aculeatum and echinatum, disa]3pear alto- 

 gether on the thicker one, tuberculatum, as old age 

 gives him a solid and heavy globose shell; and 

 next, that he too, while young and tender, and liable 

 therefore to be bored through by whelks and such 

 murderous univalves, does actually possess the same 

 briar-prickles, which his thinner cousins keep 

 throughout life. ITevertheless, (and this is a curious 

 fact, which makes, like most other facts, pretty 

 strongly against the transmutation of species, and 

 the production of organs by circumstances demand- 

 ing them,) prickles, in all three species, are, as far 

 as we can see, useless in Torbay, where no seal 

 or wolf-fish, (Anarrhichas lupus,) or other shell- 

 crushing pairs of jaws wander, terrible to lobster 



