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And then we would peer into the transparent depths of the old sarcophagus, with its fringes of green, silky moss waving slightly with the movement of the water, and fish out tiny-spired water-shells; or dip in them the bits of ancient marbles we had collected on our walk, to see the hues revive to their former splendor.
Whilst the distribution of water-mollusks may be thus accounted for, the greater variety and more restricted range of the land species is not explained. They have at least equal means of dispersion, compared with the sluggish, mud-loving water-shells of our ponds and ditches. Why should the one have varied so much and the other so little?
It is always full, with the water throbbing up clear from the invisible vents below, and tiny white water-shells floating and falling in the basin, set round with liverwort and moss, and watering a bed of teazles in the wood below. Children drink from it, and pluck wild strawberries by its banks, and the pheasant and the fox come there to quench their thirst.
Woodward has shown that the same law holds good with sea-shells, but, from the wide distribution of most molluscs, it is not well displayed by them. Other cases could be added, as the relation between the extinct and living land-shells of Madeira; and between the extinct and living brackish water-shells of the Aralo-Caspian Sea.
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