Uses of Shells. 15 
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 tor- 
toise, 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 our day. 
This fanciful mode of accounting for the origin of 
music is thus alluded to by a writer named Brown: 
