IV.] INTRODUCTION. Ixvii 



ornamenting their dwellings. Gell's ' Pompeiana ' (vol. i. 

 pp. 195, 196) contains an interesting description of the 

 celebrated " Fountain of Shells," which appears to have 

 been decorated with the Tyrian mtirex and pilgrim scal- 

 lop ; and these shells are stated to have been " neither 

 calcined by the heat of the eruption nor changed by the 

 lapse of so many centuries." Cicero is said to have also 

 used shells in decorating a fountain at his Formian villa. 

 In our own country it was once the fashion to ornament 

 grottos in the same way. 



Among other ornamental uses may be mentioned the 

 purple dye which is yielded by many shell-fish. The 

 Greeks and Romans extracted it from Murex trun- 

 culus and other species which we do not possess ; and 

 the process of dyeing constituted one of their most 

 important manufactures. An excellent article on this 

 subject, considered in a scientific and artistic point of 

 view, and entitled "Natural History of the Purple of the 

 Ancients," by Professor Duthiers of Lille, will be found 

 in the * Proceedings of the Royal Society 'for 1860*. 

 Dr. Bizio, a distinguished chemist, has also investigated 

 the nature and properties of these dyes ; and a learned 

 Scotch divine, the Rev. James Smith, has given, in the 

 'Zoologist' for 1849, a classical and elaborate disqui- 

 sition on the same subject. The common dog- whelk 

 (Purpura lapillus) of our own rocky coasts, as well as 

 Murex erinaceus, Scalaria communis, and lanthina com- 

 munis produce the same colouring-matter, but in a 

 smaller quantity and of a much less vivid hue ; and it 

 has never been turned to any account. More than a cen- 

 tury ago, Borlaise, in his ' Natural History of Cornwall,' 

 mentions "The purple-marking whelke." He says, "the 

 juice which marks is in a separate bag, of a yellowish- 



* Vol. x. p. 579. 



