18 
ANIMAL LIFE ON THE 
its death came about. Can you tell ? " Evidently bent on 
taking a rise out of the innocent, he was rather taken 
aback at the question, and remained silent for a time, but 
at last exclaimed, " Weel, I ha'e been working amang them 
since I wis a boy, an' there were aye empty anes; an' a' that 
can be said aboot it, is just that it's an empty shell." 
Wordsworth says of his ''Peter Bell" that — 
" A primrose by the river's brim, 
A yellow primrose was to him ; 
And it was nothing more." 
And, like our mussel-fisherman, how many thousands view 
the shell simply as an empty shell and nothing more. 
After all, even through years of devoted study, how 
infinitesimally little do we know of the creative power of 
that great being who holds the universe in the hollow of 
His hand ; His mysteries do not forbid us to enquire into 
and repel us from His works ; a glimpse of the glory of His 
handiwork brings us more humbly to His footstool and 
nearer to Himself. Let us then approach the subject in 
order to learn that He has — 
" Tongues in trees, sermons in stones. 
Books in running brooks, and good in everything." 
THE MUSSEL. 
The incident of the mussel-fisherman suggests the 
introduction of that mollusc, and with it let our studies 
begin. In a state of spawn, the mussel, a frail speck from 
the parent bed, is liable to be buffeted about hither and 
thither, far and near, at the mercy of the tide and waves. 
Swept into a crevice in a passing ship's bottom, or washed upon 
the rufiled surface of a beam or pile of timber on a wharf, it 
readily adheres to the spot, and the work of development 
quickly begins. Freed from the encumbrance of the embryo 
