Part 2

Among nations, too, in a high state of civilization, shells are often used for economical as well as ornamental purposes. To say nothing of mother-of-pearl, which is converted into so many articles useful as well as pretty, scallop, or oyster shells, are frequently employed as scoops by druggists, grocers, and the like; and in the country the dairy-maid, with the larger kinds of the same shell, skims her milk, and slices her butter; while sometimes by the poor people of both towns and villages, the deeper specimens are converted into oil lamps. One very important use, my young readers will understand, when I speak of a ragged urchin, who shouts to every passer-by—‘Please remember the grotto!’

In ancient times, we are told, the people of Athens recorded their votes on public occasions, by marks upon a shell, thus Pope says—

“He whom ungrateful Athens would expel, At all times just, but when he signed the shell;”

in allusion to this custom, of which we are reminded by such English words as Attestation, a certifying, a bearing witness; Testify, to give evidence; Testament, a will, or written disposal of property, etc.; all having their origin, it appears, in the Latin testa—a shell. In ancient poetry we find the word Testudo used to signify a musical instrument, also called a lyre or lute, which instrument, according to tradition, was first made by passing strings, and straining them tightly, over the shell of a tortoise. So the poet Dryden, describing those who listened to the music drawn from this simple invention, says—

“Less than a God they thought there could not dwell, Within the hollow of that shell That spoke so sweetly.”

A Greek writer, called Apollodorus, gives this account of the invention of music by the Egyptian god Hermes, more commonly known as Mercury. The Nile having overflowed its banks, and laid under water the whole country of Egypt, left, when it returned to its usual boundaries, various dead animals on the land; among the rest was a tortoise, the flesh of which being dried and wasted by the sun, nothing remained within the shell except nerves and cartilages, or thin gristly bones; these being shrunk and tightened by the heat, became sonorous, that is sounding. Against this shell Mercury chanced to strike his foot, and pleased by the sound caused thereby, examined the shell from which it came, and so got a notion, as we say, how he might construct a musical instrument. The first which he made was in the form of a tortoise, and strung with the dried sinews of dead animals, even as are the lutes, harps, and fiddles of the present day. This fanciful mode of accounting for the origin of music, is thus alluded to by a writer named Brown:—

“The lute was first devised In imitation of a tortoise’ back, Whose sinews parched by Apollo’s beams, Echoed about the concave of the shell; And seeing the shortest and smallest gave shrillest sound; They found out frets, whose sweet diversity Well touched by the skilful learned fingers, Roused so strange a multitude of chords. And the opinion many do confirm, Because testudo signifies a lute.”

And now we are among the myths and fables of antiquity, we may just mention another application of the shell to musical purposes. Neptune, who, according to the Grecian mythology, was the god of the sea, is frequently represented as going forth in his car in great state and pomp, with a body-guard of Tritons; some of whom go before with twisted conch shells as trumpets, with which we are to suppose they make delightful harmony. Venus, too, the goddess of beauty, rode on the ocean foam in a testaceous car. Thus Dryden says, that Albion—our native land, so called on account of its chalky cliffs, from the Latin alba—white:—

“Was to Neptune recommended; Peace and plenty spread the sails; Venus in her shell before him, From the sands in safety bore him.”

But without believing all these fables, more poetical than true, we may soon convince ourselves that in the hollow chambers of a shell, there does seem to dwell, like an imprisoned spirit, a low sad kind of music. An English poet, named Walter Savage Lander, has well described this in these lines—

“Of pearly hue Within, and they that lustre have imbibed In the sun’s palace porch, where, when unyoked, His chariot wheel stands midway in the wave; Shake one, and it awakens; then apply Its polished lips to your attentive ear, And it remembers its august abodes, And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.”

Wordsworth, too, gives a beautiful description of a child applying one of these pearly musical-boxes to his ear.

Many other uses of shells might be mentioned, to show that they perform an important part in the operations of nature, as the means and modes by and in which God sees fit to order the affairs of this world are frequently called; and also promote the ends of science, and the arts of every-day life. By the decomposition of the shells, of which they are partly composed, solid rocks frequently crumble to pieces, and spreading over a considerable surface, form a fruitful soil for the nourishment of vegetation. The character of the testaceous deposits, too, enable geologists, as those who study the nature and structure of the earth are termed, to come to important conclusions on many points connected with the subject of this investigation. And if we include, as the subject of our book allows, the inhabitants of shells, how wide a field of usefulness opens before us. How many thousands of our industrious population depend wholly, or in part, upon the capture and sale of shell-fish for their support. In some parts, as the western and northern Islands of Scotland, they have in times of scarcity afforded sustenance to the dwellers on the bleak and barren shores, who but for them must have perished. But of all this we shall have more to say when we come to describe the different members of the testaceous family. We will now offer a few remarks upon

THE INHABITANTS OF SHELLS;

Which belonging to that division of Natural History called the Mollusca, from the Latin Mollis—soft; these Molluscous animals, then, are animals having a soft body, and no internal skeleton. You may be quite sure that a Mollusk will never break its bones, because it has none to break; it has a shell, however, which may be broken, at least in some cases, for all Mollusks have not snug habitations of the kind; but wander about the watery or earthy world in which they live, quite naked; such as the sea and land slugs, and some worms, leeches, etc.: but with these we have nothing to do, our present subject including only a part of

MALACOLOGY,

another member of that queer ology family, deriving its name from two Greek words signifying soft, and a discourse; hence it means a discourse upon soft, or soft-bodied, animals, that is mollusca. It is only a part then of Malacology that we have to do with; that part which relates to the shell-inhabiting mollusks, and strange creatures enough some of these are. We will have a look at them presently; just now it will be sufficient to observe that the mollusca testacea, or soft-bodied animals, furnished with shells, possess the power of exuding, that is, discharging from various parts of their bodies a sticky kind of fluid, which mixing with the chalky matter collected from the water, and becoming hard, forms, in process of time, the shelly covering which is at once a dwelling and a defence for the inhabitant.

Miss Pratt, in her delightful book on “Common Things of the Sea Coast,” observes of these shells that, “We gather up those which we find, and looking at their structure would fain know something of the inmate of such a dwelling. All nature proclaims the goodness of God. We hear that the bird which wings its way over our heads has a song of joy; the bee hums delightedly by us; and the little shrimp which darts in the clear pool, seems full of merriment. Was the inmate of the shell less cared for by its Maker? No doubt the little builder had some sense of joy, as he framed from his own substance the house which excites our admiration. Doubtless his existence, short and sluggish as it was, had its own consciousness of pleasure; and obscure as is his history, and little calculated as such a creature might seem to perform an important part in the economy of creation, yet we know that he had a work to do, not only for the living creatures of the sea, but for the well-being of man himself.”

CLASSIFICATION OF SHELLS.

The great naturalist Linnæus divided shells into thirty-six genera, each of which comprised a number of species; of these species somewhere about two thousand five hundred have been described and classified; the varieties, more or less distinct, are almost countless. Of shells found on and about the British Isles, there are about five hundred and fifty species, or, we should rather say were, for diligent enquirers into this branch of Natural History, are almost daily adding to the number.

We have already seen that shells are sometimes called Crystalline, and sometimes Granular, in accordance with certain peculiarities of construction before mentioned: this is one mode of division; there are several others made use of in different systems of arrangement, which only a deeper study of the subject than can be here entered upon, would enable one to understand; the plainest and most common, however, is that which has reference to the form of the shell, which is one of these—

UNIVALVE. BIVALVE. MULTIVALVE.

Whelk. Mussel. Barnacle.]

These words are derived from the Latin, unus—one, bi—two, multus—many, and therefore it may at once be seen that they apply to shells having one, two, or several pieces or divisions. Valve comes from the Latin valva, and means a folding door, a lid, a piece moving on a hinge, as the divisions in several of these shells do.

This order of arrangement is generally followed by those who make a collection of shells for a cabinet; and to this we shall adhere as at once the most simple and convenient, when we come to describe the several species of testaceous mollusks. We will now say a few words on

TAKING AND PRESERVING SHELLS.

A diligent searcher along any beach or coast line, will be sure sometimes to light upon curious and valuable specimens, and especially after violent storms may such be sought for, with the greatest chance of success, for the agitation of the waters will then have loosened them from their natural beds and dwelling-places, and cast them on the shore. Very frequently, however, they will be so beaten about and defaced, that they will be comparatively valueless; if enveloped in tangled masses of sea-weed, they are likely to be preserved from injury; and such heaps of uprooted marine vegetation will often afford a rich harvest to the young conchologist, who should always carefully examine them. Many of the shells are so minute as scarcely to be seen with the naked eye, therefore this search can scarcely be properly effected without the assistance of a pocket lens, the cost of which is but trifling. The undersides of pieces of stranded timber, the bottoms of boats lately returned from a fishing voyage, the fisherman’s dredge or net, the cable, and the deep-sea line; all these may prove productive, and should be looked to whenever opportunity offers; nor should the search for land and fresh-water shells be neglected, for many of these are very curious, as well as beautiful, and no conchological collection is complete without them. For these, the best hunting grounds are the ditch side and the river bed, the mossy bank and the hedge-row; amid the twining, serpent-like roots of the old thorn and elder trees; the crevices of the garden wall, the undersides of stones, and all sorts of out-of-the-way holes, nooks, and corners, where may be found the Striped Zebra, and other prettily-marked snail shells, and many other kinds worthy of a place in—

THE CABINET;