THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM MAGAZINE. 



233 



A Talk about Shells, 



By Charles Hedley. 



THE Army of the Animals is ranke'd 

 in regiments, one of which has for 

 its official title "The Mollusca." 

 This name means the " soft things," 

 and is jjroperly given to the slug, the 

 snail and the squid. In days of old the 

 knights put on coats of hard and heavy 

 armour, to save their soft ttesh from 

 thrust of spear or chop of axe, when 

 fighting with their enemies. In the 

 same way most soft things among the 

 Mollusca have put on some hard cover- 

 ing that they might battle better with 

 the cruel world. 



These hard coverings, the shells of 

 the sea shore, have been considered by 

 all people in all ages to be some of the 

 prettiest things in the world. Birds, 

 butterflies, and flowers are painted no 

 brighter, and their beauty soon fades 

 or decays. Not only have the shells 

 a lasting brilliance of colour, but they 

 are wrought in most exquisite and 

 dainty shapes. Appreciation of such 

 attractive tints and forms is older than 

 our civilisation ; a thousand genera- 

 tions ago the sea shells were loved for 

 their beauty. Even in prehistoric 

 graves one finds beside mouldering 

 bones some fragments of sea-shell or 

 crumbling pearls, brought from far 

 distant shores ; records of pyramid 

 and tumulus show that both the dark 

 queens of the East and the fair prin- 

 cesses of the North clasped some 

 favourite pearl or cowry as they were 

 laid to their rest. 



Indeed, as the race grew more 

 civilised, as it grew older, richer, and 

 wiser, so it grew to forget most of what 

 it once knew about the mollusca. 

 Before metal knives were seen in the 

 world, the mollusca were more impor- 

 tant to mankind than they are now. 

 For one kind of shell- fish eaten at 

 present, a dozen good and wholesome 

 kinds were eaten formerly. To people 

 whose life was one long picnic in the 

 open air, these shells presented ready- 

 made cups, spoons, or knives. This 

 tractable material was always at hand. 



and was worked up by savages into 

 innumerable odds and ends. Shells 

 were pierced and strung into necklaces, 

 or were cut into bracelets or earrings, 

 or made into fishhooks or trumjiets. 



The best advice to give to anyone 

 who wishes to know about shells is to 

 l)egin a collection. Most ])eo])le (collect 

 something or other. A financier col- 

 lects bank notes, a philatelist his stamps, 

 other folk have pictures or porcelain, 

 while a naturalist takes to butterflies, 

 beetles, birds, shells, fossils, or ])lants. 



There are few objects easier to obtain 

 or to preserve than shells, for they are 

 not lial)le to decay, and they can be 

 fouiid almost everywhere. They occur 

 even in freezing water, mider polar ice, 

 and among the scorched vegetation of 

 the desert ; but the most beautiful in 

 shape and colour are those found 

 among coral reefs, where the water is 

 warm and clear. The smallest are 

 atoms which would almost go through 

 the eye of a needle, and the largest are 

 the Giant Clams, which may reach a 

 length of four feet and a weight of 

 five cwt. 



The first thing to remember about a 

 shell is that it was made by something 

 that lived in it : that some soft live 

 thing once sat in the shell as the kernel 

 of a walnut sits in the walnut shell, and 

 and that it built that shell with lime, 

 just as our body builds our bones. In 

 some cases that live thing does without 

 a shell, and crawls naked on the ground 

 as a slug, or swims naked in the sea, as 

 an octopus. So the shell may be 

 considered as the costume of a snail. 

 Now, sometimes that costume is in one 

 piece, as with a whelk or a periwinkle, 

 and at other times it may be in two 

 ]Meces as with an oyster, a cockle, or a 

 clam. These are the ])rincipal arrange- 

 ments, but there are a few other fash- 

 ions in shell costume, such as that of 

 the chitons, which wear a suit of armour 

 in eight pieces, and that of the squids, 

 which, by a curious perversity, wear 

 their costumes inside their bodies. 



