162 MORE MARINE SHELLS. CHAP, xn, 



had found them when digging, and the old people told 

 them that fire was in them, and that they were com- 

 manded in all haste to bury them again, for fear lest the 

 cattle should get a shot ! 



" Another thing may be added. I know that farmers 

 hereabout use seaweed as manure, and that shells of 

 Fusus, Littorina, Purpura, Patella, etc., find their way up 

 the country along with the tangles; and that cockles 

 and periwinkles are scattered everywhere. I have even 

 found them far inland, and away from cultivated land. 

 The sea-mews, when hard pressed in winter, eat turnips, 

 sea-shells, whelks, and Purpura lapillus ; and flying far 

 and near, disgorge the shells in a half-digested state. 

 Therefore, I should not attach any importance to marine 

 shells on the surface of the most solitary and unfrequented 

 moor in the county. But when I find marine shells 

 from twenty to sixty feet deep in the boulder clay, the 

 case is completely different." 



On another evening, while searching with his pick 

 among the boulder clay along the river side, he met 

 with an almost entire Turritella* amidst many other 

 pieces of shell. He had been a shell -collector for 

 fourteen years, but had never met with the smallest 

 fragment of a Turritella until the previous spring, when 

 he found a damaged fragment near Castlehill, Dunnet 

 sands. "You may therefore," he says, "judge of my 

 joy in finding one in the boulder clay. They are 



* The living Turritellae inhabit deepish sea water, ranging from one 

 to three hundred fathoms. They are known as screw-shells, from the 

 shell being elongated, many-whorled, and spirally striated. 



