NONSUCH 



proven to be merely the well deserved effects of 

 conceit, yet in the great bountiness of Nature even 

 this is not held against me. I unreasonably expected 

 the roar of waves in the helix of the conch, and then 

 the child's regret was partly swaged by other inter- 

 ests. As I near the end of this account of snails I 

 hear in the distance, over the water, a low, sweet 

 tone, swelling to penetrating power, a crescendo 

 rise and fall and rise again, with a timbre and a 

 certain quality which seems unlike that of any or- 

 chestral instrument. I unlimber my high power 

 glasses and far out, toward the sunset, I pick up a 

 fisherman's silhouette, standing in his boat, holding 

 a conch shell to his lips. After he lowers the shell, 

 the slow-moving trumpet sound again reaches my 

 ears. And now my last sense of disappointment 

 passes — I no longer regret my juvenile hopes, for 

 the conch has yielded a sound, more intimately its 

 own, more delightful because unexpected, than any 

 pseudo roar of the surf could ever be. 



And so we sum up our relations to snails ; we re- 

 call that we put him in fables to personify lethargy ; 

 we eat him — gingerly and expensively and Galli- 

 cally if he be a univalve, or wholesale and with gusto 

 if he be within a hinged shelter. We risk life diving 

 for him and hang the result of his diseases about the 

 necks of fair women ; when we are savages we chop 

 up his shell and string it for money, and when a 

 more advanced stage of civilization demands 

 clothes, we dye them with royal Tyrian purple of 



222 



