BUCCINUM. 291 



produce being disposed of in the London market for 

 food; and the rest sent to the cod-fishing banks for bait. 

 They are seldom eaten in the northern part of our isles. 

 At Dieppe and'' Nantes they may occasionally be seen 

 exposed for sale in the fish-markets. The embryology 

 of B. undatum has been investigated by Baster and 

 many other \Yi'iters. Its curious spawn-cells are figured 

 in Ellis^s ' Corallines ■' as '^ Alcyonium, sen Vesiciilcma 

 marina of Bauhin; ^^ they were also called " Sea wash 

 balls/^ because of their being used instead of soap by 

 sailors to wash their hands. Dr. Johnston compares 

 this vesicular mass to the nest of the humble-bee. It 

 is composed of numerous cartilaginous pouches, of the 

 shape and size of a large split pea^ piled irregularly one 

 upon another, and attached by their edges at the base. 

 Cailliaud counted 5 14 of these cells in one of the spawn- 

 masses. Each cell contains at first several hundred 

 eggs, which are afterw^ards so greatly reduced in number 

 that only from 15 to 30 fry come to maturity. The 

 process by which this reduction takes place has been 

 disputed by Scandinavian and English physiologists, 

 not less as to Buccinum than with respect to Purpura. 

 Koren and Danielssen state that the eggs are at 

 first spherical, that they afterwards separate into dis- 

 tinct portions, and then amalgamate or agglomerate and 

 assume a diflerent shape. Sir John Lubbock, on the 

 contrary, ascertained that the more advanced embryos 

 swallow the other yelks whole, and in such quantities 

 as to become greatly distended ; his paper in the ' Report 

 of the British Association^ for 1860 contains a represen- 

 tation of " a young embryo in the act of swallowing an 

 egg.^^ Dr. Mcintosh observed two specimens of the 

 variety littoralis, on the 19th of October 1863, in the act 

 of depositing spawn under a stone, about midtide, in a 



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