Pvn H,i I'UitlS

.290 CARDIIDiE.
variableness of the cockle-shell. No specimens are
alike. I have amused myself at the seaside in looking
over a basketful of them, with a view of finding two
exactly similar ; but I have never succeeded. They may
be distinguished one from another, like men, sheep, or
dogs. Ruskin has the following apposite remark, in his
'
[Modern Painters/ as to what he terms " the truths of
nature." He says that
"
they are one eternal — change
one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of
the globe like another bush : there are no two trees in
the forest whose boughs bend into the same network,
nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told
one from the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly
alike/' This is an eloquent and suggestive truth. Lu-
cretius had long ago illustrated the same idea by in-
stances drawn from the animal kingdom, in which he
includes " concharumque genus."
The good qualities of this shell-fish as an article of
food are notorious. The ancients appear to have been
in the habit of roasting them, if we believe that they are
the subject of one of iEsop's fables,
in which the son of
a husbandman thus apostrophizes some he cooked in
" O most
this way, and which were fizzing in the fire :
wicked creatures, are you singing, while your houses
are being burnt ?" A schoolboy thinks the true moral
of this fable ought to be, " add insult to injury," instead
of
' '
every thing
in its season." Lister mentions that in
his time cockles were eaten raw, as well as cooked ; and
Fleming and Macgillivray
notice the same custom as
prevalent in Scotland. They are also pickled like oysters,
and a "vol-au-vent aux bucardes" is by no means
a despicable " plat." Mace says that the Bretons call
them " Coques," a name also applied
to one or more
species of Tapes. Cockle-gathering is a useful, though