“Pinocchio this Time certainly did not suffer from Lack of Food.”
After Pinocchio had opened and eaten one, he no longer thought of the looks of the oyster shells. He opened and ate so many, that it was a wonder to Marsovino that so small a person could hold so much.
Suddenly Pinocchio noticed numberless tiny, tiny white specks coming out of some oysters. To him they looked like grains of sand. But when he saw the specks moving and trying hard to attach themselves to rocks, he could not help crying out, “O look at the live sand, Tursio.”
“Who told you it is live sand?” asked Tursio. “Those are the newborn oysters, looking for a place on which to spend their lives. Where those small grains hang, there the oysters will live, grow, and die.”
“If no one gets them before that,” added Globicephalous.
“And are all those little dots oysters?”
“Yes. All of them. And many of them come from a single oyster, for an oyster gives forth almost two millions of eggs at a time. These little things have so many enemies, however, that very seldom do more than ten of the millions grow old.”
“Two millions! Then I may eat all I want to,” continued Pinocchio, unmercifully tearing away the poor oysters, young and old.
“Look, Pinocchio,” here called Tursio, pointing to a small fish, colored with brilliant blues and reds. “That is the stickleback. You may have heard that this fish makes a nest, as do birds. Also that the male, not the female, takes care of the eggs.”