THE CULT OF SHELLS 65 



suggested by listening to the shell-murmur. For 

 here is a conch with a hole at the top or towards the 

 top; it will not sing as the others do; let some 

 breath be blown into it for breath spells life 

 and the strong-lunged youth had his surprise! In 

 response to his pulmonary blast there came forth a 

 trumpet-call resonant, vibratory, wailing, terrific 

 like the voice of the wind-god. It is even now 

 an instructive experience to get a strong-lunged 

 expert to blow a first-class shell-trumpet in the 

 quiet of an academic museum after hours. A force- 

 ful, insurgent, fog-horn call, with a volume that 

 makes one a little ashamed, with cadences that 

 startle and how all the " curiosities" from Ceylon 

 and Malay, from California and Madagascar, seem 

 to reverberate! For it is an old, old story. The 

 important fact was the vast effectiveness of the 

 shell-trumpet's voice, likewise the disproportion 

 between effect and cause. So the Triton, or some 

 other conch, was blown to summon men to the 

 temple and to the battle ; it was used for emotional 

 effects (and for symbolic reasons) at marriages and 

 initiations; and it was not perplexing to our fore- 

 fathers that what was official and symbolic one day 

 should be a fog-horn or a cattle-call the next. What 

 served to scare off evil spirits would also serve 

 to frighten thieves. The shell-trumpet was effective 

 and it was also beautiful. 



The Minoans of Crete were the first to manu- 

 facture the famous purple dye from sea-snails like 

 Murex and Purpura; the Phoenicians followed and 



