resembling the gills of the mushroom. Amongst
the striking varieties is the strawberry anemone,
so called from its resemblance to that fruit, and
the Weymouth anemone, which abounds on the
Dorset coast. The Nautilus or Argonaut has
been a favourite of fiction from the most remote
antiquity, celebrated by poesy and the sister arts
as having suggested to man the idea of traversing
the sea by ships. Byron beautifully
describes it "as the sea-born sailor of the shell
canoe," " the ocean Mab." The nautilus passes
most of its time crawling at the bottom of the
sea like a snail, with his boat or shell, which is
a spiral univalve in a reverse position, turned
keel upwards, but. after a storm, when the
weather becomes calm, he rises to the surface,
and spreading his sails and sitting in the poop of
his shell, floats for a while upon the water, but
soon upsetting his boat, disappears.

The structure of shells is perhaps one of the
most interesting subjects of inquiry to the
naturalist, who makes them his study in
connexion with the animals which inhabit them.
Conchology has advanced with the progress of
geological science. The most marvellous of the
shell creations are the milionites, so termed
from their multiplicity and minuteness, which
were so numerous in the pre- Adamite ocean, as
by their deposits to form the stony masses of
certain rocky ranges. Wonderful is the elaborate
mechanism employed in the double purpose of
feeding the inhabitants of every bivalve shell and
providing for the increase of his dwelling with his
growth. Carbonate of lime, for such is the earthy
substance composing shell, when deposited, is
embedded in a viscous secretion which forms a
kind of cement, and the pearly substance or
porcelain coat accumulates in concentric layers.
The fragments of a shell when broken appear
fibrous to the eye, but when viewed under the
microscope with reflected light they resemble
miniature basaltic columns. On the shell being
dissolved in dilute acid, the animal material
remains in a delicate cellular texture, in the
interstices of which the chalky matter had been
entangled. The most admired shell formation in
all ages has been the pearl, and Roman writers
inform us that British pearls were once in such
repute that Julius Caesar presented a buckler
covered with them as an offering to Venus
Genetrix, which was suspended in her temple at
Rome. We cannot at present discover such
prizes, for our modern finest pearls are
procured from the coast of Ceylon and the Persian
Gulf. Pearls are believed to be the result of
irritation in the oyster, and in their natural
state probably originate from some foreign
angular substance, such as sand being intruded
between the valves and wounding the delicate
tissue of the mantle. Linnæus was knighted by
his Swedish sovereign for having discovered a
means of making the oyster produce a pearl;
but the secret was early known to Eastern
nations, and the Chinese constantly introduce
wire shaped in the form they desire the pearly
covering to assume. Pearls are liable to lose
their lustre; perhaps it was when their beauty
diminished that they were dissolved and
swallowed by the luxurious of ancient days, and
they have ceased to be such admired adornments
of female beauty as they once were.
The pearly substance or mother-of-pearl is
termed nacre, and the beautiful iridescent
colours it exhibits are not the result of any
inherent pigment, but are entirely produced by
the action of light on the layers or folds of
membranous shell substances. The light falls on
fibrous or laminated plate-like surfaces, which
being reflected in paths of different lengths, all
the prismatic colours appear. The varied hues
of the mother-of-pearl and even of the peacock's
feather can be reproduced by taking casts of the
surfaces in the finest and purest wax. The
shell cameos in the Roman court at the
Exhibition are masterpieces of minute modern art.
The cameo was in its original sense a gem
engraved in relievo on onyx or agate, both
peculiar Chalcedonic varieties, but the Italian
artist now selects a univalve shell presenting
three distinct layers—the central one forms the
body of the bas-relief, the inner layer the ground,
while the outer supplies the surface and the
colour.

The marvels of the sea and its shores are
inexhaustible, but we must not further pursue a
path, on which, when far less trodden than now,
Spencer feared to venture:

Oh! what an endlesse work have I in hand,
To count the seas abundant projeny!
Whose fruitfulle seede farre passeth those in land,
And also those which wonne in the azure sky.

        *              *             *                *               *

Then to recount the sea's posterity,
So fertile be the flouds in generation,
So huge their numbers, and so numberless their
nation.

SERVIAN STORY-TELLING.

AMONG the popular stories of Servia is a semi-
allegorical tale on the subject of Destiny, to
which, perhaps, it would be difficult to find a
parallel among the traditions of other countries.

The hero of the tale is an industrious youth,
who worked to such good purpose for himself
and his brother, with whom he resided, that
their wealth in horses, oxen, pigs, sheep, and
bees bordered on the marvellous. The brother,
on the other hand, led a perfectly idle life, and
simply helped to consume the common stock
without stirring a finger for its production.

After some time had passed the industrious
lad began to reflect that an arrangement by
which he did all the work, while his brother
enjoyed half the produce, was far from equitable.
He therefore proposed a separation, much to the
grief of his sleeping partner, who represented
to him that if indeed he alone laboured for
them both he had also the sole control over
the property, and had therefore every reason
to be contented. This argument, which was
specious enough, proved utterly fruitless, and
the active brother departed from the hitherto
common home, taking with him half the stock.