dental ribbon, the broadly-spread pedal disk hides it, the exact method of the operation is concealed. Having with the utmost care witnessed a number of times the creature in the burglarious act, I give the following as my view of the case: With its fleshy disk, called the foot, it secures by adhesion a firm hold on the upper part of the oyster's shell. The dental ribbon is next brought to a curve, and one point of this curve on its convex side is brought to bear directly on the desired spot. At this point the teeth are set perpendicularly, and the curve, resting at this point as on a drill, is made to rotate one circle, or nearly so, when the rotation is reversed; and so the movements are alternated, until, after long and patient labor, a perforation is accomplished. This alternating movement, I think, must act favorably on the teeth, tending to keep them sharp. To understand the precise movement, let the reader crook his forefinger, and, inserting the knuckle in the palm of the opposite hand, give to it, by the action of the wrist, the sort of rotation described. The hole thus effected by the drill is hardly so much as a line in diameter. It is very neatly countersunk. The hole finished, the little burglar inserts its siphon or sucking-tube, and thus feeds upon the occupant of the house into which it has effected a forced entrance. To a mechanic's eye there is something positively beautiful in the symmetry of the bore thus effected-it is so "true;" he could not do it better himself, even with his superior tools and intelligence.

Oystermen also complain of ravages perpetrated by the great conch. But there are two of these conchs, widely distinguished by naturalists. One of them has the upper edge of the whirls ornamented with a projection, with bosses at uniform intervals: this is the keeled conch, and is called, by Conrad, Fulgur carica. The other one has a canal or groove running round the shell, on the top of the whirls this is the grooved conch, and it has lately been named, by Gill, Sycotypus canaliculatus. The oystermen say that these conchs "rasp the nib of the oysters;" and with their large tongue-files this is not hard to do. It is certainly going a great way for an analogous case; but I have examined numbers of the first-created oysters, fossil oysters, in the New Jersey Cretaceous formation, and have found not a few among them which had received precisely that treatment from certain ancient carnivorous gasteropods.

But the most insidious foe to the life and peace of the poor oyster is the star-fish. The American species, which does the mischief, is the green star-fish (Asterias arenicola). The species obnoxious to the European oyster is the red star-fish (Asterias rubens). (See Fig. 10.) The sea-star does not like water that is too brackish; that is, it loves saltwater. Whenever the Shrewsbury River is affected by the breaking in of the sea, there is danger for its celebrated oysters. On several occasions, at such times, the star-fishes have come up in great numbers, and utterly destroyed the bivalves. At one time so great were

their numbers, that they were thrown up on the shore in large, loathsome, squirming balls. Says Verrill, "In one instance within a few years, at Westport, Connecticut, they destroyed about 2,000 bushels of oysters, occupying beds about twenty acres in extent, in a few weeks, during the absence of the proprietor."

It is curious to read the silly stories that are told in the name of Natural History. There is one that says that the star-fish puts its fingers or rays into the oyster's shell, and helps itself. From every point of consideration the thing is ridiculously impossible. A more sober judgment is that given by some naturalists, namely, that the sea-star protrudes its great sac-like stomach, and envelops to a great extent the oyster therein, and so leisurely digests the mollusk out of its unopened shell, much as a codfish does the shells it swallows.

FIG. 7.-TUBICOLA.-a, Serpula contortuplicata; b, Spirorbis communis.

After having seen young star-fishes eat small specimens (that is, such as were suited to their size) of oysters, mussels, and scollops, which I have fed to them in au aquarium, I give the following as based on a number of observations: Having brought the oval, or stomach orifice, exactly opposite the nib of the oyster, the star embraces the bivalve with its five flexible rays, aided by the hundreds of sucking-disks on the tiny feet. Thus positioned, the star-fish clings firmly, but keeps itself quite still, and waits very patiently. After a while, the instinct of the oyster will be at fault, and it will open, as if no enemy were near. At this moment, as it seems to me, is injected from the oral orifice of the star a baleful " sidereal blast." It is a something that paralyzes the mollusk; because, from that moment the valves of the oyster are opened to their full extent, and the hold of the flexible rays is relaxed. Instantly a singular variation of the performance sets in. The rays are withdrawn and set back to back-the stomach is protruded, and the doubled-up star intrudes itself into the oyster, the evicted stomach leading the way in the movement, and absorbing its victim. If the famous "India-rubber man" could throw backward his arms, legs, and head, and in this position could then infuse him

self, stomach-first, into a partially-opened writing-desk, he would rival this feat of the sea-star, without the villainy of injecting chloroform through the key-hole.

But the oyster race has one foe more formidable than all the restone who invades their ancient waters with iron implements and hungry fleets-who brings to his service the appliances of a high intelligence, and the impulsion of an imperious necessity-who, after the strictest rulings of the old barbaric cannibals, assigns the adult captives to immediate immolation, and reserves the young to be grown and fed for a future feast. And everybody eats the poor oyster

prince and peasant-the healthy and the sick; even he who is paying the penalty of long defiance to a stern physical law, and to whom all food is suggestive of torture, thinks he might stand an oyster or two. The rollicking student, brimming full of frolic and swagger, emerging from his day's course on the humanities, fancies that oysters make a good dessert after such dry pabulum. In fact, he holds the bivalves in so high esteem that he informs "Chum," sentimentally, of course, that he thinks oysters should be called pabula amoris, and proposes a dozen each on the half-shell. So the saloon-man prepares for the immolation. With the implement of his calling he taps at the passageway, "The gate's ajar." Treachery! The iron enters the soul! Chum takes the initiative. The mollusk approaches the lips-and-it is gone! There is a gleam in Chum's eye-a flash ecstatic; it is the light of genius satisfied. "Tom, it is the elixir of the gods solidified! How it went down like a chunk of bliss! Facilis descensus Averni.”

It is a pity that candor should compel one to seem to spoil this fine Roman sentiment by quoting Roman practice. But we cannot cover up history; and we are the less willing to do so, because we are about to cite transactions that will prove the great wrongs suffered by Ostrea, for so these Romans called our oyster. The chroniclers tell that

the Emperor Vitellius could eat a thousand of these bivalves at a meal. What vitals must this Vitellius have had! Who would dare undertake to victual such a glutton as that? It is said of that gentle wag, Charles Lamb, that, on a certain occasion, the omnibus in which he rode was stopped by a man, who poked in his head and bluffly asked, "All full in there?" To which Lamb meekly made response, "I don't know how it is with the rest-but that last piece of oyster-pie did the business for me!" But this Vitellius was not so easily done

FIG. 9.-FRAGMENT OF THE TONGUE-FILE, OR Lingual RIBBON, OF THE WHELK (Buccinum undatum), MAGNIFIED.

for as that comes to. Having engulfed his fill of these ostrean innocents, this royal gourmand would open the sluice-gate of his kingly maw, and cause a slave to tickle the fauces with a peacock's feather. This, acting as an elevator, effected a full discharge of the beastly cargo of that carnal vessel. This done, that ostreaceous appetite would load up afresh. Would not the evertible stomach of a starfish have been an inestimable blessing to that imperial beast ?

DIETETICS OF THE OYSTER.—Are oysters good to eat? Said Montaigne, "To be subject to colic, or deny one's self oysters, presents two evils to choose from." This is very fine for Montaigne, but it is a libel for all that. Besides, he was a sickly man at best of times. Says Reveille-Paris: "There is no alimentary substance, not even excepting bread, which does not produce indigestion under given circumstances, but oysters never. We may eat them to-day, to-morrow, eat them always, and in profusion, without fear of indigestion." It is said that the first Napoleon always ate oysters on the eve of his great battles, if they could be got. Says Figuier: "The oyster may thus be said to be the palm and glory of the table. It is considered the very perfec tion of digestive aliment. . . . The small proportion of nutritive matter explains the extreme digestibility of the oyster." It "is nothing more than water slightly gelatinized." But, if we would have authority the most recent, and thoroughly trustworthy, let us go to that little book in the "International Scientific Series," "Foods," by Edward Smith, M. D. Here we have the dictum of the physiologist: "The oyster is not a food of high nutritive value, but is nevertheless useful to the sick, while its delicacy of flavor leads to its selection when other foods are rejected. The more usual mode is to eat it when uncooked; and it is very doubtful whether cooking increases its digestibility. It is, however, possible that the flavor of scalloped may be preferred to that of the raw oysters, or that the vinegar which is usually eaten with the latter may be disliked, or may disagree with the stomach, but, with

such exceptions, the usual method of eating them raw is to be preferred" (page 116).

Americans, I believe, are the only people who eat the so-called soft-shell crabs; that is, crabs at the time of having cast the skin. It is not at all probable that, at such a time, the animal is wholesome food. And so with oysters, during the spawning-season, it is wiser to abstain, for the reason that one is not sure that the oysters we are eating then are not in a spawning state. In its normal condition the oyster is excellent food; and, if we assign it its rank among the shellfish, it will be, without dispute, the queen of the bivalves.

SOME FACTS, GEOGRAPHICAL AND ETHNOLOGICAL.-Says Figuier, Virginia has 2,000,000 acres of oyster-beds. In many places they grow so thickly that they make immense mounds in the water, the lower oysters being killed by those above. Even mouths of the sea have been closed by them, says Dr. Smith. Certainly in this particular the wealth of Virginia and Maryland is immense. In former times all the suitable waters of New York and New Jersey abounded in native oysters. There are those yet living who remember the custom of the farmers to go with their wagons to the shore at or near Keyport, New Jersey, to gather "natural" oysters. There is a curious old map in existence which will, we predict, become famous as an authority in the appeals of State diplomacy. It is dedicated to Governor Moore,