290 BUCCINID^. 



fish-bait^ by putting a dead cod into a wicker basket 

 and letting it down on a muddy bottom; it is soon 

 taken up half filled with whelks. The same method is 

 adopted for their capture on the English and Irish 

 coasts. The whelk aJffords an illustration of the lex 

 talionis ; fishes in their turn devour it with equal greedi- 

 ness. I have seen between 30 and 40 shells of B. unda- 

 twn extracted from the stomach of a single cod. After 

 the shell has been cleared out and ejected by the fish, 

 it makes a convenient habitation for the hermit-crab. 

 Other nations have not quite so great a fancy as ours 

 for eating the whelk : perhaps it is an indigenous taste ; 

 for when the Romans were in this country, they seem 

 to have acquired it — being one which they could not 

 gratify in Italy. Shells of B. undatwn, mixed with 

 those of the oyster, have been noticed among the ruins 

 of a Roman station at Richborough. At the enthroni- 

 zation feast of William Warham, Archbishop of Canter- 

 bury, on the 9th of March 1504, there were provided 

 " 8000 whelkes at 5^. V 1000.^' In the shell-fish market 

 at Billingsgate the present species goes by the name of 

 tlie '^ white ^■' or ^^ common''^ whelk, in contradistinc- 

 tion to Fusus antiquuSf which is there called the ^' red ^^ 

 or " almond ^^ whelk; they are brought chiefly from 

 Whitstable, Ramsgate, Margate, Grimsby, and Harwich. 

 My obliging informant Mr. Baxter says, ^' Wilks must 

 be sold the same day we receive them at market in the 

 summer, being the day after they are caught ; if 

 the supply is greater than the demand, we boil them, 

 and they keep good for several days."*^ Evidence was 

 given before a select committee of the House of Com- 

 mons in the Session of 1866, on the ^ Whitstable oyster- 

 fishery extension Bill,' that the whelk-fishery on a sandy 

 flat in that bay yielded J12000 a year, — part of the 



