46 EDIBLE BRITISH MOLLUSCA. 



be content with so small a cup as the little common 

 cockle. It must have been some larger shell, and for- 

 merly the word " cockle " was applied to any shell : 

 besides which, the common cockle could not, from its 

 shape, be used for skimming milk, and from its size, 

 it would be of little use for that purpose. Moreover, 

 we know that the so-called cockle used in the 

 Hebrides for that purpose is a Mya, there called the 

 cockle. 



The Irish, the South Welsh, and probably others, 

 call the whelk (Buccinum undatum) the Goggle, and 

 know it by no other name. It is evidently the same 

 word, and is more correctly applied, as we shall pre- 

 sently see. 



" Cockle" w;is the common name in olden times 

 for the escallop of pilgrims, — " he wore the cockle in 

 his hat," &c. ; and it is still often used in heraldic 

 language. Lydgate, when he says — 



" And as the coclcille, with heavenly dewe 

 So ciene 

 Of kynde, engendreth white perlis rounde." 



means evidently the oyster, alluding to the old fable of 

 pearls being formed by the oyster's rising to the sur- 

 lace of the water at the full moon, and opening its 

 shell to receive the falling dew-drops, which thus 

 hardened into pearls, — an idea which is quaintly de- 

 tailed by Robinson, in his ' Essay towards a Natural 

 History of Westmoreland and Cumberland ' (1709), 

 who, in speaking of the pearls procured from the rivers 

 Irt and End, says " Those large shellfish which we call 

 horse-mussels, which, gaping eagerly and sucking in 

 their dewy streams, conceive and bring forth great 

 plenty of them," (the pearls), " which the neighbour- 



