32 Shells as evidence of tJie Migrations. 



been both seen and heard in a certain cavern, blowing a 

 conch-shell, and of the form under which they are usually 

 represented. 3 And one of the Scholiasts on Homer says, 

 that before the discovery of the brazen trumpet by the 

 Tyrrhenians, the conch-shell was in general use for that 

 purpose. 6 



The larger species of B-uccinum is still used by 

 Italian herdsmen in directing their cattle. It is also 

 common in North Wales, Staffordshire, Lithuania, and 

 Muscovy, where they are also applied to pastoral pur- 

 posesv 7 At Casamicciola, in the Island of Ischia, conch 

 shell trumpets are sounded to scare away thieves and 

 birds from the vineyards and gardens/ Sicilian fishermen 

 use Triton nodiferns as a trumpet, and Verany tells us 

 that at Nice this shell, with a hole at the top, serves as a 

 trumpet for the fishermen and country people, and that 

 the braying noise produced by it renders this unmusical 

 instrument indispensible for the old-fashioned charivari, 

 which he describes as a deafening serenade to signalize 

 the marriages of widows and ill-assorted couples. y A. 

 Mosso relates that the Triton is still sounded in church 

 at Piedmont, and that during the services in Holy Week 

 at Chieri, when the choir was singing the psalms, and a 

 table was struck with sticks during the so-called tenebrae 

 of the sepulchre, the sacristan gave him a Triton shell to 

 sound. 10 Issel also relates that during the services of 



8 Pliny, "Nat. Hist.,'' ix., ch. 4. (Bohn's Ed., vol. ii., p. 362). 

 ' Ibid, (footnote by Bostock & Riley). 



7 Roberts, op. cit., p. 97, and Lovell, " Edible Brit. Moll,"' 1884, p. 



194. 



s Lovell, op. cit., p. 194, quoting Dr. Wm. Russell, *' Memories of 

 Ischia," Nineteenth Century, Sept., 1883. 



9 Jeffreys, op.-cit., iv., 1867, p. 303. 



10 Mosso, " The Dawn of Mediterranean Civilization," 1910, p. 365. 



