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The pictures illustrate isolated scenes in the life-history of the mollusc, which in a certain sense offers a solution to, the conundrum stated by job "Who, hath begotten the drops of dew?" July 17, 1909. Found a small cowry shell of remarkable beauty on dead coral in the Bay.
In maturity the mollusc weighs several pounds, its shell has a capacity for as much as two gallons of water, and is coloured uniformly buff, while in old age infantile milk-white reasserts itself.
It is remarkable that in localities in which this mollusc is found a seaweed occurs similar in shape and size, the chief difference in appearance being in the length of the stalk, which in the plant is thin and membranous.
In the mollusc, on the contrary, the retina is derived from the ectoderm directly, and not indirectly by means of the embryonic encephalon. Quite different, therefore, are the evolutionary processes which lead, in man and in the Pecten, to the development of a like retina.
They very soon appeared; and while Nub went to have a look at the mollusc which he and Dan were to have for breakfast, the seaman came and threw himself down at the mate's side with a small branch of tree in his hand, which he was examining attentively. "What is that you have got there?" asked the mate, turning round to him.
Or an inoffensive mollusc may be goaded by the piercing of its shell from the exterior to create that for which men venture into the depths of the sea. If a pearl-secreting oyster be inherently robust, its defence against assault from without may consist of the strengthening of the interior at the point of attack by deposits of nacre.
After several fruitless attempts the crew tried to pass a slip-knot round the body of the mollusc. The noose slipped as far as the tail fins and there stopped. They tried then to haul it on board, but its weight was so considerable that the tightness of the cord separated the tail from the body, and, deprived of this ornament, he disappeared under the water." "Indeed! is that a fact?"
According to him the fact that variations can be inherited and accumulated has less to do with the first development of organic life, than the fact that if a square organism happens to get into a square hole, it will live longer and more happily than a square organism which happens to get into a round one; he declares "the survival of the fittest" and this is nothing but the fact that those who "fit" best into their surroundings will live longest and most comfortably to have more to do with the development of the amoeba into, we will say, a mollusc than heredity itself.
Crawling up the sides, the Snails imprisoned in my apparatus sometimes reach the top, which is closed with a glass pane, and fix themselves to it with a speck of glair. This is a mere temporary halt, in which the Mollusc is miserly with his adhesive product, and the merest shake is enough to loosen the shell and send it to the bottom of the jar.
Then there are "slimy things that crawl with legs upon a slimy sea," and any quantity of hopping mud-fish, and crabs, and a certain mollusc, and in the water various kinds of cat-fish.
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