oyster-shell must have observed that it seemed as if composed of
successive layers or plates overlapping each other. These are
technically termed 'shoots,' and each of them marks a year's growth;
so that, by counting them, we can determine at a glance the year when
the creature came into the world. Up to the epoch of its maturity, the
shoots are regular and successive; but after that time they become
irregular, and are piled one over the other, so that the shell becomes
more and more thickened and bulky. Judging from the great thickness to
which some oyster-shells have attained, this mollusc is capable, if
left to its natural changes and unmolested, of attaining a patriarchal
longevity. Among fossil oysters, specimens are found occasionally of
enormous thickness; and the amount of time that has passed between the
deposition of the bed of rock in which such an example occurs, and
that which overlies it, might be calculated from careful observation
of the shape and number of layers of calcareous matter composing an
extinct oyster-shell. In some ancient formations, stratum above
stratum of extinguished oysters may be seen, each bed consisting of
full-grown and aged individuals. Happy broods these pre-Adamite
congregations must have been, born in an epoch when epicures were as
yet unthought of, when neither Sweeting nor Lynn had come into
existence, and when there were no workers in iron to fabricate
oyster-knives! Geology, and all its wonders, makes known to us
scarcely one more mysterious or inexplicable than the creation
of oysters long before oyster-eaters and the formation of
oyster-banks--ages before dredgers! What a lamentable heap of good
nourishment must have been wasted during the primeval epochs! When we
meditate upon this awful fact, can we be surprised that bishops will
not believe in it, and, rather than assent to the possibility of so
much good living having been created to no purpose, hold faith with
Mattioli and Fallopio, who maintained fossils to be the fermentations