INTRODUCTION. IX 



qucntly employed as scoops by druggists, grocers, and the like; and 

 in the country the dairj^-maid, with the Larger kinds of the 

 same shell, skims jier 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 ever passer-by — 'Please remember the grotto!' 



In ancient times, we are told, the people of Athens recorded 

 their votes on puljlic occasions, by marks upon a shell, thus Pope 

 says — 



"He whom unnrratcful Athens would expel, 

 At all times just, but when he sigrncd 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 w^ill, 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 jN^ile having overflowed its banks, and 

 laid under water the whole country of Egy^pt, left, when it returned 

 to its usual boundaries, various dead animals on the land; among 

 the rest was a tortoise, the flesli 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 w hich 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 

 vith the dried sinews of dead animals, even as are the lutes, haqxs, 

 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: — 



