EDIBLE BIVALVES. 39 



the Mediterranean, the rocks are broken with large hammers 

 in order to procure the Lithodomus dactylus, or Seadates, 

 which abound there, and are admired even at the tables of 

 the luxurious, — the fish proving all the more delicious, says 

 Aldrovandus, that it is fed not with gross sea-water, but with 

 a certain most limpid dew which filters through the rocks. * 

 In India, the favourite dish bacassan, extolled by Rum- 

 phius as the most grateful of all kinds of food, f is prepared 

 from the Tellina gari, Linn. ; and in South America they use 

 a large mussel, eight inches long, and of excellent flavour, 

 but the name of which is unknown to me. " They are often 

 salted and dried; after which, they are strung on slender 

 rushes, and, in this manner, large quantities are exported."]: 

 This practice reminds me of a somewhat similar one adopted 

 by the Africans in the neighbourhood of the river Zaire or 

 Congo. They take large quantities of a species of Mya from 

 out the mud round Kampenzey Island, and, as in a raw state 

 the animals are without flavour, they stick them on wooden 

 skewers, as the French do frogs, and. half dry them. They 

 pass thus into a state of semi-putrefaction, become entirely 

 to the taste of the negroes, and form an important object of 

 traffic. § The natives of New Holland and New Zealand 

 did, at the time of their discovery, use the Chama gigas, or 

 " Dutchman's Cockle " (Fig. 5, c), a very large shell, a pair of 

 the valves of which were presented, as natural curiosities, to 

 Francis I. by the Venetians ; and which Louis XV., more 

 zealous, as he has himself taken care to let us know, for the 

 glory of God, destined to hold holy water in the magnificent 

 church of St. Sulpice in Paris, where they to this day ac- 

 tually serve the purpose of baptismal fonts. || Captain Cook 

 tells us that it sometimes attains a size so great that two men 

 are required to carry it ; and containing full 20 lbs. of good 

 meat, it often furnished him and his fellow-adventurers an 

 esteemed repast. ^[ Brace mentions the same species as being 



* See also Strickland in Charlesw. Mag. N. Hist. i. 23. 



t Baster Opusc. Subs. ii. 76. 



X Stevenson's Narrative of Twenty Years' Residence in South America, 

 i. 123. 



§ Tuckey's Narrative, &c. 55. 



|| Smith's Tour on the Continent, i. 82. 



1 Answers returned by Sir Philiberto Vernatti, resident in Batavia, in 

 Java Major, to certain inquiries sent thither by order of the Royal Society : 

 Question put—" Whether, about Java, there be oysters of that vast bigness 

 as to weigh three hundredweight 1 " Answ. — "I have seen a shell-fish, but 

 nothing like an oyster, of such a bigness, the fish being salted and kept in 

 pickle, afterwards boylcd, tastcth like brawn in England, and is of an liorney 

 substance." — Sprat's Hist. Ii. Soc. 171. 



