CHAPTER II. 
Shell-Trumpets and their Distribution in the 
Old and New World. 
The wide-spread use of shells as horns or trumpets is 
of very ancient origin. 
The Latin word Auccina, or Bucctnum, a trumpet, 
was indiscriminately applied by the ancients to almost 
every kind of spiral univalve shell. Amongst the Greeks 
the large 7yiton nodiferus, Lam., was the trumpet used 
in land- and sea-fights, as well as for setting the watch 
and calling together assemblies of the people. 
Triton, Neptune’s trumpeter, is generally depicted 
with a large conch shell in his hand, with which it is fabled 
he convened the river deities around their monarch. It 
is wreathed, like those called Szkanos, or Sea-horn, 
common to India, Africa,and the Mediterranean, and still 
used as trumpets for blowing alarms or giving signals. 
Itanian coins (czrca 200-67 B.C.) have the figure of a 
sea-god or triton carrying a trident and blowing a conch- 
shell.’ 
Triton holding a conch with both hands and blowing 
into it is also seen on the coins of Agrigentum, Sicily 
(before B.C. 406.)* 
Pliny tells us that a deputation of persons from 
Olisipo [Lisbon], that had been sent for the purpose, 
brought word to the Emperor Tiberius that a triton had 
' Jeffreys, ‘* Brit. Conch.,” iv., 1867, p. 284. 
* Mary Roberts, ‘* Popular History of the Mollusca,” 1851, p. 97. 
» ® BV. Head, ‘* Hist. Numorum,” 1887, p. 398. 
* Jbid. p. 106; and * BLM, Cat. Greek Coins: Sicily,” 1876, p. 15. 
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