only the empty echo, should teach us the proper range of our intellectual faculties. We have to do, not with causes, but with facts. Of the latter we have abundance; of the former there has been granted to us no revelation. It ought to be enough for us, that "secret things belong unto the Lord our God;" and with him is "the fountain of life." It may be for the Infinite and Eternal alone to declare what it is.

The

To adopt the words of an eminent naturalist, Dr. W. Harvey: "Every plant and every animal is, while its life endures, a personal fellow-worker with the Deity, -not creating, as he creates, absolutely, but an author of relative creations-an agent in his hand of changes which force merely physical could never compass. growth of cellular or vascular tissue, whereby the body, once but a living speck, becomes what God has destined it to become the internal action of organised bodies, -animal will,-the reproduction of the species, all these are utterly antagonistic to the physical laws of matter. They are manifestations of that other agency-life, an attribute of the personal God; and while the portion of the life committed to each lasts, the body performs its wondrous functions."

The sketch now given of the wonders of an oystershell, would be wanting in one interesting particular, if no notice were taken of the fact that this house of a living creature commonly becomes the residence of a

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multitude of others. There, for instance, grow cora lines, which certainly have nothing in their appearance when collapsed and removed from their native element But only let one of the fines to attract attention. fronds of one called the "sickle beard" be taken and dipped in water, and it will spread out into a beautifu white plume, with rows of cups on the edges of its fibrils, and others about its stem, each cup containing flower-like head of the animal, whose tentacles collect the food for its support.

There, too, may be observed little shelly rugged tubes, the dwellings of very different creatures, clustering on oyster as well as other shells, and whatever else may have lain at the bottom of the sea. Beautiful and graceful is the serpula as it issues from its tube, waving its breathing organs, of exquisite structure, adorned with the richest tints of yellow, violet, azure, or crimson, before the unassisted eye. Nor less admirable in structure is that little inverted cone-like body, to open and close the tube, which is pushed out of the of the organs of respiration.

But to give only another instance of this kind, it may be stated that Professor Allman, a very vigilant and careful observer, found, at a supper-table, an oystersted by various creatures. On looking more

e discovered, what eyes less acute would to perceive, some small white dots, ir

egularly placed on the surface of the fronds of some f these parasites. Laying, therefore, the oyster-shell side for further examination, and submitting a fragnent to the microscope on the following day, he was soon rewarded with a sight of a delicate, glossy fan, and, in fact, with the discovery of a new plant. Each of the minute dots was now seen to consist of one or more, frequently of a cluster, of transparent fan-shaped bodies. Each dot, or cluster, crumbles under the touch, being composed of carbonate of lime; not as an incrustation, but as intimately incorporated with the tissues of the plant.

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CHAPTER V.

RELATIVES OF SILVER-SHELL.

STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF OYSTERSGROWTH ON BOTTLES STRUCTURE OF THE GLOBE-FOSSIL OYSTER -OYSTER BANKS OF GEORGIA.

It is important to remember that Silver-shell was not a solitary being, but a member of a widely-extended family, even were we to regard only the contemporaneous progeny of the parent oyster. The breeding season continues from May, or the beginning of June. to the close of July, and during these months the oyster is not edible, and is said to be "sick," or "in milk.” If, therefore, prior to this period, that is, in March or April, an oyster be examined, the organ which is the ovary, or egg reservoir, will be found filled with a milky fluid, teeming, as the microscope will show, with minute creatures. In June these embryos have attained to their proper size for exclusion, and are invested with a uny and ilmy shell. They now pass down a tube, and are owed to the gill chamber, situated between PARCĂ NÀO mor overing of the oyster, called the

at, gud hote de food edges for a time, sustained

Dy its viscid slime, as the young of the opossum and the xangaroo find a temporary dwelling-place in the pouch with which their parents are so remarkably provided. In due time the minute oysters are gradually extruded, and by the end of July all have been dispersed on the surrounding waters. How numerous they are is evident from the fact that one oyster was found to contain one million two hundred thousand eggs; a sufficient number to fill, in maturity, no fewer than twelve thousand barrels.

Nor should it be overlooked that the future circumstances of a single brood are marked by a great and often strange diversity. Mr. Busk mentions* the valve of an oyster-shell which resembles a combination between an oyster and a pholas, one of the rock-boring mollusks. He thought that the oyster had encased the pholas, or, at least, that the pholas is enveloped in its valve. Professor Henslow, however, has come to a different conclusion:

"I suspect," he says, "that such is not the case, and that Mr. Busk has the genuine shell (one valve) of an oyster only. A specimen of a fossil oyster which I prepared for the Ipswich Museum a few weeks ago seems to explain Mr. Busk's puzzle. This shell (probably a detrital relic from the Suffolk drift) had attached itself by the lower convex valve to an ammonite,

* "Annals and Magazine of Natural History," March, 1855.