other owner of shell-crushing jaws wanders, terrible to lobster and
to cockle. Originally intended, as we suppose, to face the strong-
toothed monsters of the Mediterranean, these foreigners have
wandered northward to shores where their armour is not now needed;
and yet centuries of idleness and security have not been able to
persuade them to lay it by. This - if my explanation is the right
one - is but one more case among hundreds in which peculiarities,
useful doubtless to their original possessors, remain, though now
useless, in their descendants. Just so does the tame ram inherit
the now superfluous horns of his primeval wild ancestors, though he
fights now - if he fights at all - not with his horns, but with his
forehead.

Enough of Cardium tuberculatum. Now for the other animals of the
heap; and first, for those long white razors. They, as well as the
grey scimitars, are Solens, Razor-fish (Solen siliqua and S.
ensis), burrowers in the sand by that foot which protrudes from one
end, nimble in escaping from the Torquay boys, whom you will see
boring for them with a long iron screw, on the sands at low tide.
They are very good to eat, these razor-fish; at least, for those
who so think them; and abound in millions upon all our sandy
shores. (3)

Now for the tapering brown spires. They are Turritellae, snail-
like animals (though the form of the shell is different), who crawl
and browse by thousands on the beds of Zostera, or grass wrack,
which you see thrown about on the beach, and which grows naturally
in two or three fathoms water. Stay: here is one which is "more
than itself." On its back is mounted a cluster of barnacles
(Balanus Porcatus), of the same family as those which stud the