ttle shells are of
all sizes, from half an inch to two inches in length. When the stone
is first turned over, the fish is almost out of its home, and the
bright colour of the shell is hidden by a fleshy integument, but a few
seconds suffice for it to withdraw within doors, and then the mottled
pattern is seen in its full beauty. The best way to get the shell
without injury to its gloss, is to keep the fish alive in a bucket of
salt water, until you reach home, and then to dig a hole a couple of
feet deep, and bury them. In a month or so, they may be taken up, and
will be found quite clean, free from smell, and as bright in hue as
during life. I have tried boiling them, heaping them in the sun, and
various other methods, but this is undoubtedly the best.

[Illustration--SATIN BOWER-BIRDS]

Should it ever fall to the lot of any of my readers to have to cook
periwinkles--and there are many worse things, when you are certain of
their freshness--let them remember that they should be boiled in 'salt
water'. This is to give them toughness; if fresh water is used,
however expert the operator may be with his pin, he will fail to
extract more than a moiety of the curly delicacy. These little facts,
though extraneous to our subject, are always worth knowing.

At one end of Garden Island, and distant from it about 200 yards,
stands a very singular rock, of a whitish hue, and when struck at a
certain angle by the sun, so much resembling the canvas of a vessel,
that it was named the "Sail Rock." At low tide this could be reached
by wading, the water being little more than knee-deep. Its base was
literally covered with oysters of the finest quality. The mere task of
getting there was one of considerable difficulty, for the rock was as
slippery as glass, and whenever you got a fall--which happened on an
average every five minutes--bleeding hands and jagged knees bore
testimony to a couch of growing bivalves being anything but as soft as
a feather bed; also the oysters cling so fast that they might be taken
for component parts of the rock, and only a cold chisel and mallet will
induce them to relinquish their firm embrace. Three or four of the
party had ventured out, and we had secured a large sackful, after which
we all retired to the tent, except one of our number, who, having a
lady-love in Cardwell with an inordinate affection for shell-fish,
lingered to fill a haversack for his 'inamorata'. We were comfortably
smoking