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 



