Why, it was his grand idea about there being mussels aplenty in the Big Sunflower down our way that started us into making a try for fresh-water pearls in the river.

And who but Dunois would have been so reckless as to follow baked mussels and crépinettes with rognons frits? Dunois, too, revealed intrepid leanings toward strange liquors.

On each table stood a couple of glass jars containing the mangled vestiges of the crayfish, mussels, frogs, and guinea-pigs upon which the students had been working, and down the side of the room, facing the windows, were shelves bearing bleached dissections in spirits, surmounted by a row of beautifully executed anatomical drawings in white-wood frames and overhanging a row of cubical lockers.

Whisky toddy and plotty (red wine mulled with spices) came into the supper-room in ancient flagons or stoups after a lengthy repast of broiled chickens, roasted moorfowl, pickled mussels, flummery, and numerous other good things had been discussed by a party who ate as if they had not dined that day.

*** The bacteriologist of the Oyster Merchants' and Planters' Association claims to have discovered a means of purifying polluted mussels.

[170] V. Martens identified amongst the tertiary mussels of the banks of clay the following species, which still live in the Indian Ocean:Venus (Hemitapes) hiantina, Lam.; V. squamosa, L.; Arca cecillei, Phil.; A. inaequivalvis, Brug.; A. chalcanthum, Rv., and the genera Yoldia, Pleurotoma, Cuvieria, Dentalium, without being able to assert their identity with living species.

It now looks more like a tiny mussel.