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Pacific Coast oysters fail in size, flavor and cooking, when compared with the luscious bivalve of the Atlantic, so far as the ordinary forms of preparation is concerned. Even fancy dishes, such as Oysters Kirkpatrick, would be better if made of the eastern oyster, not what they call the eastern oyster here, for that is a misnomer, but the oysters that grow in the Atlantic Ocean.

The little bivalve, however, finding itself left by the tide, has wisely shut up its siphons, and, by means of its foot and its edges, buried itself in a comfortable bath of cool wet sand, till the sea shall come back, and make it safe to crawl and lounge about on the surface, smoking the sea-water instead of tobacco. Neither is that depression what we seek.

As we were proceeding along the beach, we saw, just rising as it were out of the water, a small ridge. "What can that be?" I said, drawing nearer to it. I saw, as I got close to the water's edge, that it was a huge bivalve. As far as I could judge, it was alive.

Pencroft also thought of mixing with the water some moisture from the titra's flesh which he had brought. Herbert ran to the beach and returned with two large bivalve shells. The sailor concocted something which he introduced between the lips of the engineer, who eagerly drinking it opened his eyes. Neb and the reporter were leaning over him. "My master! my master!" cried Neb.

However, Herbert, who had gone forward a little more to the left, soon came upon rocks covered with sea-weed, which, some hours later, would be hidden by the high tide. On these rocks, in the midst of slippery wrack, abounded bivalve shell-fish, not to be despised by starving people. Herbert called Pencroft, who ran up hastily.

In fact, M. Defrance, in a work* full of new and ingenious ideas, not only recognizes this preponderance of the univalves in the number of the species, but also observes that out of 5500 fossil univalve, bivalve and multivalve shells, contained in his rich collections, there are 3066 univalve, 2108 bivalve, and 326 multivalve; the univalve fossils are therefore to the bivalve as three to two.

If I had worked my way from a sponge instead of a lobster, I should have found it associated, by like ties, with a great number of other animals into the sub-kingdom 'Protozoa'; if I had selected a fresh-water polype or a coral, the members of what naturalists term the sub-kingdom 'Coelenterata', would have grouped themselves around my type; had a snail been chosen, the inhabitants of all univalve and bivalve, land and water, shells, the lamp shells, the squids, and the sea-mat would have gradually linked themselves on to it as members of the same sub-kingdom of 'Mollusca'; and finally, starting from man, I should have been compelled to admit first, the ape, the rat, the horse, the dog, into the same class; and then the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, the frog, and the fish, into the same sub-kingdom of 'Vertebrata'.

You think yourself a tough old bivalve, but the most serious complaint you suffer from is ingrowing sensitiveness. They do want you. They'd invite you if you gave them half a chance. Oh, I know you won't, of course; but if I had my way I'd have you dragged by main strength to every picnic and tea and feminine talk-fest within twenty miles.

Throughout this great division of the animal kingdom, as far as I can discover, secondary sexual characters, such as we are here considering, never occur. In the Lamellibranchiata, or bivalve shells, hermaphroditism is not rare. In the next higher class of the Gasteropoda, or univalve shells, the sexes are either united or separate.

The sea, entering into the clefts of the rocks, and in a cavern at the foot of the Castillo del Morro, compresses the air and makes it issue with a tremendous noise. The same coral rocks as those of the Castillo and La Punta are found in the lofty inland mountains, accompanied with petrifications of bivalve shells, very different from those now seen on the coasts of the Antilles.