“A flitting shape of fluffy down In the shadow of the woods, ‘Tu-wit! tu-whoo!’ I wish I knew; Tell me the riddle, I beg— Whether the egg was before the Owl Or the Owl before the egg?” Arranged by Ella F. Mosby. So when the night falls and the dogs do howl, Sing ho! for the reign of the horned owl. We know not alway Who are kings by day, But the king of the night is the bold brown owl. —Barry Cornwall. THE OYSTER AND ITS RELATIVES. Of all the grand divisions of the Animal Kingdom, the subkingdom Mollusca is probably the least known to the ordinary observer, and if one were asked to enumerate as many different kinds of “shell fish” as he could, it is probable that not over six or eight different varieties would be named. The majority of people think of a clam, oyster, mussel, snail or Nautilus and their molluscan vocabulary ends with these names. And yet this group of animals is second only to the insects in number of different species, beauty of coloration and interest of habitat. They may be found everywhere, in salt and fresh water, in our forests and fields, our ponds, brooks and rivers; in the valleys and on the mountain tops, and even in the waters of the frozen north, while in the warm waters of the tropics they flourish in uncounted millions. In size they range from the little sea-snails hidden in the eel grass along the shore, with tiny shells scarcely an eighth of an inch in length, to the giant squid, which measures forty feet or more from the tip of its tail to the end of its long arms; and they range from the tide-washed beach to the abyssal depths of the ocean. It is to these lowly creatures that I would draw the reader’s attention. In nearly all the species of the Mollusca the animal is protected by a hard shell, made of carbonate of lime, which is covered with a horny epidermis to protect the limy shell from being dissolved by the acids in the water. This shell is generally capable of containing the entire animal, thus affording, in most cases, adequate protection for the soft body. Those animals not provided with a shell, as is the case with the land slugs, are capable of covering themselves with a sort of mucus which encysts and protects them from both extreme heat and cold.