reverence attached to it.* Reversed varieties of the Turbinellus pyrum, or Chank, are held sacred in China, where great prices are given for them; and they are kept in pagodas by the priests, who, on certain occasions, administer medicines to the sick from them, and also use them to anoint the emperor at his coronation. + Blumenbach informs us that the same shell is made into arm and finger rings, and worn by the poorer Hindoos. After their death, these rings are thrown by their relations into some holy river, and never again taken up by any of the people; hence, he adds, the great consumption of such rings, and the importance of the fishery for the shells from which they are manufactured. ‡ The negroes of Prince's Island lay a string of the Helix bicarinata above the door of their cabins as an agreeable fetiche to their god, fitted to draw down his protection over their modest hearths; but the shell being one on which conchologists set a high value, and in consequence an object of commerce, the devotion of the negroes has yielded to avarice, and the fetiche is now exchanged for tobacco, spirits, old clothes, and toys. § In the dark ages a scallop (Pecten jacobæus), fixed to the hat in front, was the emblem of the pilgrim journeying to the Holy City; || and to this custom allusion is occasionally made by our poets and popular writers. Thus the love-crazed Ophelia in her song:

"How should I your true love know

From another one?

By his cockle-hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon."

:

And thus Parnell says of his hermit:

"To clear this doubt, to know the world by sight,
To find if books or swains report it right,
He quits his cell, the pilgrim staff he bore,
And fixed the scallop in his hat before."

* Clarke's Travels, Scandinavia, i. 75.

+ Dillwyn's Desc. Catalogue, 569.

Elem. of Nat. Hist. 260. The principal "Chank Fishery" appears to be that of Ceylon, and is of sufficient importance to be regularly farmed and carried on under a set of regulations prescribed by government. It produces an annual rent of about 41,100 rix dollars.-Asiatic Journal for April, 1827, p. 469, &c.

§ Ann. des Sc. Nat. xxiv. 27. For other religious applications of shells the reader may consult Bonanni, Rec. Ment. et Ocul. 77 et seq.; and Conchologist's Companion, 52.

It is not easy to account for the origin of the shell as a badge worn by pilgrims; but it decidedly refers to much earlier Oriental customs than the journeys of Christians to the Holy Land, and its history will probably be found in the mythology of Eastern nations."-CLARKE'S Travels, ii. 538, 4to.

and thus Wordsworth, when he celebrates the hospitality of the "hooded Celibates" of St. Bees:

Fig. 10.

You will now admit that the Mollusca have contributed their due share to ornament "the outward man ;" and you could scarcely expect such animals to do more in the way of clothing us. Nor do I mean to surprise you by finding amongst them a rival to the silkworm, for indeed the claims of the silk-spinning Mollusca are very trifling. But the Pinnæ (Fig. 10), a curious genus of the bivalved class, do spin a kind of silk, which has been woven into some articles of dress, in early times so highly prized as to have been set aside for the use solely of emperors and kings. This silk is the byssus, or rather the cable, of the animal, by means of which it is moored to the rocks, in the same manner that our common mussel is. In a crude state the silk is called lana penna: the threads are extremely fine, of a perfect equalness in diameter through their whole length, and of great strength. It is cleansed from its impurities by washing in soap and water, drying and rub

or.

"The abbey of St. James, in Reading, gave Azure, three scallop-shells Here I know not what secret sympathy there is between St. James and shells; but sure I am, that all pilgrims that visit St. James of Compostella in Spain (the paramount shrine of that saint), returned thence obsiti conchis, all beshelled about' on their clothes, as a religious donative there bestowed upon them." FULLER, Ch. Hist. ii. 228. On shells in heraldry, see a beautifully-illustrated and interesting volume, entitled 'The Heraldry of Fish,' p. 220-228, by Thomas Moule : Lond. 1842. Also, Gibbon's Life,

bing with the hands. "It is then passed through combs of bone, and afterwards, for finer purposes, through iron combs, or cards, so that a pound of the coarse filaments is usually reduced to about three ounces of fine thread. When mixed with about one-third of real silk, it is spun on the distaff, and knit into gloves, caps, stockings, vests, &c., forming a stuff of a beautiful brownish-yellow colour (resembling the burnished golden hue on the back of certain flies and beetles), but very liable to be moth-eaten, and requiring to be wrapped in fine linen. A pair of gloves costs on the spot about six shillings, and a pair of stockings eleven; but its sale is not very extensive, and the manufacture is peculiar to Taranto." You can see a pair of gloves made of this material in the British Museum.

The most costly and brilliant dye of which we read in history was procured from shell-fish. This is the Tyrian purple -"that glorious colour, so full of state and majestie, that the Roman lictors with their rods, halbards, and axes, make way for this is it that graceth and setteth out the children of princes and noblemen: this maketh the distinction between a knight and a counsellor of state: this is called for and put on when they offer sacrifice to pacifie the gods: this giveth a lustre to all sorts of garments: to conclude, our great generals of the field, and victorious captaines, in their triumphs weave this purple in their mantles, enterlaced and embroidered with gold among. No marvel therefore if purples be so much sought for: and men are to be held excused, if they run a madding after Purples." The dye was discovered by the Phoenicians; and Aristotle and Pliny give nearly the same account of the process by which it was procured. They tell us that the liquor was contained in a transparent branching vessel or vein placed behind the neck of the animal, and that it was at first of the colour and consistence of thick cream. When the shells were small, the whole were bruised together in a mortar; but when large, the fish were first removed, the receptacle of the dyeing liquor taken out, and this mixed with a considerable quantity of salt to keep it from putrefying: "It was then diluted with five or six times as much water, and kept moderately hot in leaden or tin vessels, for eight or ten days, during which the liquor was often skimmed to separate all the impurities. After this, the wool to be dyed, being first well washed, was immersed and kept therein for five hours; then taken out, cooled, and again immersed, and continued in the liquor till all the colour was + Holland's Plinie, i. 258.

Edin. Encyclop. xii. 372.

exhausted.*" It is very plain, from their account, corroborated as it is by many other testimonies, that univalve shell-fish did furnish this dye; and there can be no hesitation in rejecting as entirely groundless the opinion of Mr. Bruce, the Abyssinian traveller, that the purple-fish at Tyre was only a concealment of the Tyrian's knowledge of cochineal. † The exact species of shell-fish which furnished the true dye has, however, been made a subject of particular inquiry and of some dispute; for here, as in relation to many other objects of natural history, the descriptions of the ancients are so vague, that the attainment of certainty is often impossible. It may be safely inferred from Pliny's account, that there were several species, all of them referable to the genera Murex and Buccinum of Linnæus, and native, one of them to the shores at Tyre; another or the same to Africa within the island Meninx or Zerbi, and by Getulia; another to Laconica in Europe,-these affording a dye of different intensities of colour, presumed to depend on certain specialities in the food or in the nature of the soil. Fabius Columna, a Neapolitan nobleman, and the best authority on this question, believes that the Purpura of Pliny is the Murex trunculus of Linnæus (Fig. 11), one of the commonest shells of the Mediterranean;§ while the Buccinum of the Roman naturalist may be the Purpura patula (Lamk.), though the correspondency of external characters is, in the latter instance, less exact. The Purpura lapillus so abundant on our own, and on the shores of Europe in general, is very likely to have been the principal of the lesser sort of Purples; but it is impossible for us to give assent to the conjectures of M. Lesson, that the ancient purpuriferous Buccinum was the Ianthina fragilis, because the coloured liquid excreted by this singular mollusk is purple on its emission, is contained within a gland of a different character from a vein, and is remarkably defective in permanency, the very quality *Thomson's Hist. of Chemistry, i. 91.

† Travels, i. 63, Introd.

Purple dye was obtained from the Murex, Purpura, and Conchylium. Pliny mentions also the Buccinum and Pelagium. The Buccinum alone was not approved of; but when united with the Pelagium, gave a deep bright colour. The dye of the Conchylium appears to have been less deep than that of the Purpura. Pliny distinguishes three shades of colour-tyrium or purpura, amethystinum, and conchylium. The first was like congealed blood or deep crimson; the second like the amethyst or violet; the third a lighter pink or blue, as in the plants heliotropium, malva, and viola serotina. He also says that the conchylium had a strong unpleasant smell, and resembled in colour the sea in a storm.

§ Dr. Wilde has proved that this was one of the shells, and probably the principal one. Ann. Nat. Hist. iii. 271.

Loudon's Mag. Nat. Hist. i. 389.

which imparted its chief value to the real dye. The same reasons prevent us concurring in the guesses of those who enumerate the Aplysia depilans and Scalaria clathrus among the Purples.*

Fig. 11.

From the simplicity of the art of dyeing with the Tyrian purple, the simple application of the fluid to the dress and exposure to light, without any further process, and without the use of any mordant, being all that is necessary,—its early discovery was to be expected. Accordingly we are told that it was the first colour which mankind were enabled to fix permanently on wool and linen; and its invention is lost in fable. While a certain Hercules strolled along the shore with his lady-love and her dog, the latter, in its sport, mouthed a shell which had been tossed up by the waves, and had his lips coloured with the purple juice. The lady, surprised with the beauty of the colour, yearned for a dress of the same purple, and the wish sufficed to call into exercise the ingenuity of her lover, who was enabled to gratify her wishes! This discovery is presumed to have been made 1400, or, at the utmost, 1500 years before the Christian era; and it was perhaps the principal commodity of Tyre when its " merchants were princes, and its traffickers the honourable of the earth." You well know how greatly its beauty and permanency have been lauded by poets as well as naturalists; but

*Edin. New Phil. Journ. v. 403.