this country, for agriculture and architectural purposes, is made of calcined 

 shells. The public street of Christianstadt, and Santa Cruz, are paved 

 with the Strombus Gigas, or great screw shell ; and the town of Conchylion 

 is entirely built of marine shells. The Cyprsea Moneta or money cowry, form 

 the current coin of many nations of India and Africa, and the covering or coat 

 of an inconsiderable worm, stands at this day, as the medium of barter for the 

 liberty of man, a certain weight of them being given in exchange for a slave. 

 The scholar needs not the reminiscence that the suffrages of the ancient 

 Atheneans were delivered in, marked upon a shell. 



He whom ungrateful Athens could expel, 



At all times just but when he signed the Shell. 



Pope. 



The record of which is still commemorated on the derivation of our terms 

 Testament and Attestation. The word testado or shell is used, for a musi- 

 cal instrument in poetry, the first lyre being said to have been made by strain- 

 ing strings over the shell of a Tortoise : 



Less than a God they thought there could not dwell 



Within the hollow of that shell, 



That spoke so sweetly. Dryden. 



The Hermes or Mercury of the Egyptians surnamed Trismagistus, or thrice 

 illustrious, is reported by Apollodorus to have been the inventor of music, 

 under the following circumstances. The Nile having overflowed its banks, and 

 inundated the whole country of Egypt, on its return to its customary bounds, 

 left on the shores various dead animals, and among the rest a Tortoise, the 

 flesh of which, being dried, and wasted by the sun, nothing remained within 

 the shell, but nerves and cartilages, and these being tightened and constricted 

 by the drying heat, became sonorous. Mercury, walking along the banks of 

 the river, happened to strike his foot against this shell, and was so pleased with 

 the sound produced, that the idea of the lyre suggested itself to his imagination. 

 The first instrument he constructed was in the form of a Tortoise, and was 

 strung with the sinews of dead animals. There is something beautiful in this 

 allegory which leads us into a conception of the energetic powers of the 

 human mind, in the early ages of the world, thus directed to a discovery of 

 the capabilities of nature, by the finger of Omnipotence in the form of accident. 



