end itself to
one accustomed to the superior product in the same line found on the
American coast. This bivalve of the narrow sea is often transported in
considerable quantities inland to Rome, where it does not always prove
harmless to strangers, though the digestive organs of the natives seem
quite able to grapple with it. The author was once seriously poisoned by
eating "oysters on the shell," at Nazzari's famous restaurant, near the
corner of the Via Condotti, in Rome.

As regards this island of Filfla, it gives us a wealth in numbers and an
astonishing variety of forms representing marine life, including sea
anemones, sea urchins, and so on, together with some small shells almost
as lovely as flowers. Men-of-war cruising in these waters use the island
as a target, and fragments of shot and shell consequently abound upon
its surface. Naturalists tell us of a peculiar species of lizard found
on this islet, quite different from anything of the sort to be seen on
the larger islands, "beautiful bronze-black creatures, quite tame, and
much more agile than their brethren on the mainland." So off the harbor
of Bombay, the author has seen on the island of Elephanta remarkable
beetles, unlike any of the species to be found elsewhere. They are
scarcely larger than one's little-finger nail, but nature has clothed
them in harlequin attire, combining golden, steel-blue, and pink. These
tiny creatures have prominent eyes, like a King Charles spaniel, which
seem to gaze at one with something like human intelligence. The question
naturally suggests itself, where can a distinctive species of animal
life have been derived and developed after this fashion, in these
isolated spots? Is this the outcome of some not understood principle of
evolution, beginning as vegetable, and developing into animal life? That
the earth produces the former spontaneously we know, and that it may
gradually, in the course of ages, become endowed with the latter has
been declared possible by scientists. In our museums we see fossil
organisms which exhibit in nearly consecutive order the slow evolution
of both animals and plants. By this means palaeontologists have been able
to connect some of our present mammals, through intermediary forms, with
their tertiary ancestors in primitive conditions.

Leaving the field of conjecture to scientists, let us resume the course
of our Maltese story.

It is believed that at a comparatively modern date, geologically
sp