Shell-Trumpets and their Distribution. 69 
But that is still more surprising which [ have read in 
Plutarch,—that the onion becomes green and flourishing 
as the moon wastes away, and dries up again while the 
moon increases; and this is the cause, say the Egyptian 
priests, why the Pelusians do not eat the onion ; because 
it alone of all potherbs has its turns of diminishing and 
increasing contrary to those of the moon.” (Johnstcn, of. 
cit., pp. 330-7). Kirckringius, it is stated, “knew a young 
sentlewoman whose beauty depended upon the lunar force ; 
insomuch, that at full moon she was plump and handsome, 
but in the decrease of the planet so wan and ill-favoured, 
that she was ashamed to go abroad, till the return of the 
new moon gradually gave fulness to her face, and attrac- 
tion to her charms. If this seems strange, it is indeed no 
more than an influence of the same kind with that which 
the moon has always been observed to have upon shell- 
fish, and some other living creatures.” He quotes Lucilius, 
and the words of Manilius: 
“ Si submersa fretis, concharum et carcere clausa, 
Ad luna motum variant animalia corpus.” 
“This opinion,” says Johnston, “continued to be for long 
a part of the popular creed, and even so late as 1666 it 
had in nothing been impaired, for, in the ‘ Philosophical 
Transactions’ of that year, travellers to India are solicited 
to inquire, ‘whether those shell-fishes that are im these 
parts plump and in season at the full moon, and lean and 
out of season at the new, are found to have contrary con- 
stitutions in the East Indies’—a nice question, to which 
the answer returned was, ‘I find it so here, by experience 
at Batavia, in oysters and crabs.’” (Johnston, of. czz., p. 
37). 
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