and innocence *, and has moreover been early employed as a carrier. The first person that ever made this use of the pigeon appears to be Noah, who despatched one from the windows of the ark, in order to ascertain whether the waters of the deluge had subsided. When it was nearly time for the patriarch to quit the ark, the dove returned with an olive leaf in her bill, as a token of reconciliation between the offended majesty of heaven and the sons of men; and, on being sent forth a third time, she returned no more. (Genesis, viii. 8-12.) In the book of Leviticus, Moses commanded that for a sin-offering a man should bring a lamb or a kid, the one the type of the Lamb of God, and the other emblematical of the great scape-goat of mankind; but, should he be disabled by poverty from offering either of these, the remaining means of atonement for the sinner was 66 a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons." (Leviticus, v. 6, 7.) Our Saviour beautifully alludes to the gentle disposition of the dove, when he cautions his disciples on this wise, "Be ye therefore wise as serpents, but harmless as doves." (Matthew, x. 16.) And the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Redeemer, at his baptism, was in the form of a dove. (Matthew, iii. 16.)

The term of pigeoning, or over-reaching, a person, originated in a practice common amongst sharpers, at a period when the qualities of this bird as a carrier were not generally known, of employing pigeons for the rapid transmission of news connected with the sporting world. A rogue by these means was accurately informed of the result of any important match for some time previous to its being communicated by the accustomed channel, and was thus enabled to lay his bets with certainty; and the phrase has been carried still farther by the application of the term of plucking a pigeon, meaning the depriving a person of all that he is worth by sharping.

[Shenstone, in his pathetic "Pastoral Ballad, in Four Parts," has these delightful lines:

"I have found out a gift for my fair;

I have found where the wood pigeons breed;

But let me that plunder forbear,

She will say 't was a barbarous deed.

For he ne'er could be true, she averr'd,
Who could rob a poor bird of its young;
And I loved her the more, when I heard
Such tenderness fall from her tongue.
I have heard her with sweetness unfold
How that pity was due to a dove;
That it ever attended the bold,
And she call'd it the sister of love."]

To this day a roast pigeon is occasionally served up at the table of sharpers, as emblematical of the profession. Fifty or sixty years ago, it was customary to cast off a carrier pigeon at Tyburn, immediately that a criminal was turned off, in order to give the earliest information of the event to the surviving relatives.

ART. III. An Introduction to the Natural History of Molluscous Animals. In a Series of Letters. By G. J.

Letter 14. On their Food and Digestive Organs: Carnivorous Mollusca.

ALTHOUGH it may be true, as stated in the preceding letter, [p. 218-224.], that the great proportion of the Conchífera subsist on food in a state of molecular division, yet there can be no doubt that some of the larger and locomotive species seek a more substantial fare, and feed on worms or other animal matter in a state of partial decay; which they seem to have the power of grasping by means of their extensible labial appendages. Thus the large Cýprina islandica and the Modiola vulgaris of our seas very often swallow the bait of our fishermen, and in the stomach of an individual of the former I once found the undigested remains of a large green Nereis enveloped in a pulp too consistent certainly to have been the sediment from water, however loaded with molecules. In their manner of feeding, these Conchífera resemble the pectinibranchial gasteropodes whose shells have a notch or canal at the base of their apertures; and it is important you should remember that it is only, with a few exceptions, the gasteropodes of this order (Pectinibránchia) so circumstanced that are truly carnivorous. They embrace the Cypræ`ade, the cones, the volutes, the rock shells and the whelks, all of which live on animal food, and it seems to be indifferent to them whether their prey is dead, or still fresh and alive; but, in the latter case, it is obvious, if you remember the inactivity, and sluggishness, and total want of cunning, of these molluscs, that the prey they can master must be fettered and stationary, or endowed with locomotive powers and arms not superior to their own. It is not unlikely that they may prefer a dead prey to a living one, for we know that the whelks will take a bait readily, and they frequently enter the baskets laid for crabs and lobsters, which are always baited with garbage; while in tropical climes we are told that they fish for the olives with lines, to which small nooses, each containing a piece of the arms of a cuttlefish, are appended.

You could never have anticipated that the Bivalved Mollúsca (Conchífera) would be found among the prey of these carnivorous tribes, than which there are apparently no animals less fitted to gain access to their strong-holds, so that even Blainville has expressed himself incredulous on the point. But the fact is certain, and has been known since the time of Aristotle (Hist. Anim., lib. iv. cap. iv. sect. 148-9.); nor, indeed, is it hastily to be believed that such an improbable statement would have been made by the Stagyrite, had it not rested on personal observation. The Púrpuræ prove extensively destructive to muscles and other littoral bivalves: the Búccina feed upon those which burrow in sand in somewhat deeper water; and it is very probable, considering the similarity of their organisation, that all the whelks and rock shells, and perhaps all the pectinibranchial zoophagous gasteropodes, have the same taste, and an equal capacity of gratifying it. How, you ask, and by what means? Do they glide insidiously, and pop a stone between the valves, to prevent their closure? or do they venture slily to insinuate their foot, and seize upon the unwary inmate? The first they cannot do, and the latter I should deem a hazardous attempt; but nevertheless it is affirmed that the Búccinum undàtum really runs the hazard in its attacks upon the clam (Pécten operculàris), to which it bears a great enmity. This is not, however, their usual method, which is what you might never guess by boring a hole in one valve through which they reach their miserable victim. On examining a number of valves of dead shells, of Máctræ and Anatinæ especially, you will perceive in many, and generally near the beaks, a small circular hole drilled with a neatness that the gimlet of the artisan could not more than emulate; and these holes are the workmanship of the

"Is commonly taken in dredging by fishermen, who either use the animal for bait, or destroy it, from a supposition that it is very destructive to the large scollop, Pécten máximus, by insinuating its tail (as it is termed) into the shell, and destroying the inhabitant: this, we have been assured, they will do even in a pail of sea water." (Mont. Test. Brit., p. 238.) The mode in which they anciently fished for the Púrpuræ proves the danger. "Now these purples are taken with small nets, and thinne wrought, cast into the deep; within which, for a bait to bite at, there must be certain winckles and cockles, that will shut and open, and be ready to snap, such as we see those limpens be, called mituli. Halfe dead they should be first, that, being new put into the sea again, and desirous to revive and live, they might gape for water: and then the purples make at them with their pointed tongues, which they thrust out to annoy them; but the other, feeling themselves pricked therewith, presently shut their shels together, and bite hard. Thus the purples, for their greedinesse, are eaught and taken up, hanging by their tongues." (Holland's Plin., i. 259.)

gasteropodes in question.* Having secured the shell, by applying to it the disk of the foot, they apply, to the point where they mean to penetrate, the apex of their proboscis, and now by a constant rubbing or grating of their filiform rough spinous tongue, assisted, perhaps, by some corrosive quality of the saliva, they succeed ultimately in perforating the shell. Surely the "patientia vincit" [patience overcomes] had never a more remarkable illustration; for the Búccina may work for days, and even weeks, before the life of the animal attacked is fully extinguished.

But the proboscis (fig. 50.), the organ by which this work is effected, demands a more detailed description; for its me

&

chanism is scarcely less wonderful than the analogous organ of the elephant. It is cylindrical and of considerable length, and when not in use is kept retracted within the body, where it lies beyond the 50 reach of injury. The better to understand its structure, we may represent it as being formed of two flexible cylinders, one within the other, and which are united at the upper margin, so that, in drawing out the interior cylinder, we can only lengthen it at the expense of the other; and, on pushing it back again, we, in shortening it, give corresponding extension to the exterior, but the latter lengthens only on the upper side, because it is fixed to the parietes of the head by its inferior margin. Let us now add a number of longitudinal muscles, all of them very much divided at both extremities: the stripes of their internal or superior extremity are attached to the parietes of the body, those of the opposite end all along to the internal surface of the inner cylinder of the proboscis; and their action, consequently, is to draw this cylinder and the whole proboscis inwards. When thus retracted, a great part of the internal surface of the interior cylinder makes part of the external surface of the exterior cylinder, and it is just the contrary when the proboscis is elongated and protruded. The protrusion of the inner cylinder by the unrolling of the exterior, or, which is the same thing, the evolution of the proboscis, is effected by its own peculiar annular muscles: these encircle it all its length, and, by con

"The purple hath a tongue of a finger long, pointed in the end so sharpe, and hard withall, that it is able to bore an hole and pierce into other shell-fishes, and thereby shee feeds and gets her living." (Holland's Plin., i. 258.) The ancients were better informed on this subject than some modern writers, who have attributed these operations to the Tròchus. (See Smellie's Phil. of Nat. Hist., i. 396.)

tracting in regular succession, they force it out beyond the lips, in a manner perfectly similar to the evolution of the tentacula of the snail. There is, in particular, one muscle, near the place where the exterior muscle is attached to the head, which is stronger and more effective in this operation than all the others. When extended, the proboscis can be bent to all sides, and at any point, by the action of the retractor muscles, parcels of them acting, while others assume the place and office of antagonists. The figs. 51, 52, and 53. will serve

to illustrate this interesting mechanism. In fig. 51. the proboscis is retracted about a half: the external cylinder (a) is seen enveloping a portion of the inner (b), the end of which (c) is the end of the proboscis: the muscles which draw it within the body (d d) are in a state of contraction, and at e we see the great annular muscle, the use of which is to push forwards the inner cylinder, and consequently lengthen the organ. In fig. 52. this muscle, and all the annular fibres, have by their action greatly protruded the proboscis, and its retractor muscles (d d) are extended and laid bare; the exterior cylinder (a) has become very short, and the interior (b) is proportionably lengthened. Fig. 53. represents the two cylinders cut up in a longitudinal direction to show what they contain, and in what manner the retractor muscles are distributed upon the inner parietes. In the inner cylinder we find the tongue, with all its apparatus (ee), the salivary