Red Sea Shells. 13 



that for lacli of hearers whisper their old world tale of upheaval 

 and cataclysm to the ears of silence, the store of strange flowers 

 and spicy herbs that bloom and breathe in their so called "desert" 

 clefts, the wild water-worn Wadies populous with every kind of 

 lizard and beetle life, and more populous still with the swarms of 

 fantastic shapes and delicately coloured wings that nightly besiege 

 the traveller's tent-lamp : if I could send one of you hereafter to 

 study this coloured picture-book of science, rocks, flowers, shells, 

 insects, and the rest, at which I only glanced in passing ; then I 

 should feel I had earned your gratitude to day for making an 

 exhibition of my shells, and — my ignorance. 



I need scarcely remind you that the Red Sea at its northern 

 end is split as it were into two channels, by the wedge-shaped 

 peninsula of Sinai. Both of these gulfs, Bahr Suez, and Rahr 

 Akaba, are rich in mollusca, mostly of a similar character to 

 those of the Indian Ocean, but of the four hundred and eight 

 species of the Red Sea seventy-four are common to the Medi- 

 terranean, from which it would seem, that these seas must have 

 communicated since the first appearance of some existing shells. 

 Where the water is shallow, and there is much sand, as on the 

 African coast of the Gulf of Suez, shells of great delicacy abound, 

 but this is not the general character of the Red Sea. It abounds 

 no less in corals than in molluscs, and on the shores of the 

 peninsula, which are rocky and shelve suddenly, there is a perfect 

 overgrowth of coral, affording protection to the hardier tribes 

 which affect the shelter of its crevices, but no long stretches of 

 sand on which the waves may wash their more brittle treasure 

 unbroken. As a general rule, therefore, the more delicate of these 

 shells were gathered in the pools of the Suez shore. While the 

 larger and more substantial belong either to the coast south of the 

 Wells of Moses, or to the shore of the Gulf of Akaba. 



It was on the 15th March, 1864, that tired out with the ever- 

 lasting crowd and clatter of Cairo, where I had been obliged to 

 stay some weeks longer than I had intended, I thought I would go 

 down and spend two days at Suez until the camels could be got 

 together for my " long desert" journey. People said to me " Why go 

 to Suez r there's nothing there but dulness and dirt," and I am 

 sorry to say this is the character it has most unjustly gained, owing 

 I suppose to the report of our Anglo-Indian friends who pass 

 through without stopping. An old story however came to my 

 mind, to which 1 have been grateful all my life, the story of " Eyes 

 and no eyes," and I went. At Suez I found a pleasant hotel, kept 

 by M. Schembri, a Maltese, where all the servants were Hindoos, 

 and they called " luncheon " " tiffin." I slept on a diwan in the 

 verandah, for the hotel was full of people, who did not care for 



