290 BTJCCINIM. 



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 affords 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- 

 tum 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. undatum, 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 5s. ty 1000." In the shell-fish market 

 at Billingsgate the present species goes by the name of 

 the " white " or " common " whelk, in contradistinc- 

 tion to Fusus antiquus, 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 f Whitstable oyster- 

 fishery extension Bill/ that the whelk-fishery on a sandy 

 flat in that bay yielded 12000 a year, part of the 



