“I was once fishing, when the man in the boat with me caught a cuttle-fish in this way, and having lifted it into the boat too soon, it spurted its ink with such force as to spatter us all over. It is not used as food in this country, but it makes excellent bait.” Scattered along the coast were a number of scarlet berries, which Mr. Miller looked at very closely, and said they were cranberries. “But do cranberries grow on sea-weeds?” said Henry. “No,” replied Mr. Miller, “certainly not; and I can only account for their being here by supposing that some ship from America must have been lost at sea during the late gale, and that these berries must have formed part of her cargo. You remember how dreadfully we heard the wind howling on Christmas Eve. It was a sad Christmas to many a poor sailor, who hoped, perhaps, to spend it among his friends on shore; friends, alas! whom he will now never meet again. See, here is something else which must have come from a ship.” This was a small lump of spermaceti, a substance which is obtained from a kind of whale found in the Arctic regions. It had neither taste nor smell, and looked exactly like a piece of camphor. “Look!” said Henry, as he picked up something; “here is a curious piece of wood full of holes, like the stone which we found the other day.” [Illustration: TEREDO.] “This,” said Mr. Miller, “is a piece of wood, which was once, perhaps, part of a ship that has been wrecked; at all events, it has been a long time in the water. The holes were made by a kind of worm, called Teredo, which eats its way into the hardest timber, making it so weak that a slight blow will crush it. In some seas the Teredo is so abundant, that no vessel is safe unless its bottom is entirely coated with copper. The worm is very small when first it gets into the wood, but grows larger as it eats its way, making a passage through the whole length of a plank, but never coming to the surface; so that a beam of timber may appear to be solid, and yet all the while be within as full of holes as a sponge. As it goes on, it lines its passage with a white shell, which it has the power of making.” In one of the holes a portion of the white shell was still remaining. “Is it not,” continued Mr. Miller, “a wonderful little animal? It can work its way in the dark, through solid wood, taking care never to turn a quarter of an inch too much towards the right or towards the left. It is taught by God to line its house with shell, but no one knows how it works, or what materials it employs; and, worm as it is, the boldest sailor would refuse to go to sea in a ship which it had taken hold of. It may lead us, too, to despise nothing that God has made, however trifling it may appear.” [Illustration: BARNACLES.]