146 POPULAR BRITISH CONCHOLOGY. 



almost cylindrical whorls ; one has a flattened spire, with a 

 keel in the middle of tlie whorl ; one has two broad keels, 

 another three narrow ones ; while, in one extreme instance, 

 the last whorl is separated and extended, having an umbi- 

 licus behind the mouth. Yet it is not very difficult to a 

 practised eye, to recognize a certain resemblance running 

 through all these varied forms. 



Most persons can remember, at one time or other, parti- 

 ticularly when children, being busy with a pin in one hand 

 and a " winkle " in the other, sticking the point into the 

 horny plate, and so drawing out the savoury morsel, whose 

 appearance is so unpromising, but whose flavour is by no 

 means to be contemned. 



The consumption of boiled periwinkles, called ^^Pin- 

 patches " in Suffolk, is large in London, as well as in many 

 maritime places, and forms a considerable item of trade. 

 Several of the species are very difficult to distinguish, through 

 their great variability of form. Each form has had a sepa- 

 rate name given to it at one time or other, but they glide so 

 much into each other that it is not easy to define where one 

 ends and the other begins. Messrs. Eorbes and Hanley 

 suspect that some of the intermediate forms may be hybrids. 

 On the whole, I am inclined to take the boundaries of the 



