SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 385 



and thence resMpped to London. But the attention of the scientific 

 zoologist must now be turned to the habits of these and others of the 

 favorite moUusca, and to the circumstances and seasons in which their 

 ova are developed, otherwise they will speedily be classed among 

 those extinct species which have owed their extirpation to the presence 

 and influence of man. 



By such facts the remote past is brought once more into intimate rela- 

 tion with the present ; and even in matters so apparently trivial as the 

 nice discrimination of the palate between the Patella vulgata and the ' 

 Turbo littoralis, we thus detect a correspondence between the tastes 

 of the rude aboriginal savage of primeval centuries, and the civilized 

 Anglo-Saxon of the British metropolis ; though even now it is as a 

 popular favorite, and not as a coveted delicacy, that the periwinkles, 

 and also the larger Buccinum undatum or waved whelk, are imported 

 into London, and gathered on the Scottish and Irish coasts. 



At Skara, near the house of Skaill, in the west mainland of Orkney, 

 one of a singular class of stone structures, designated Fiefs houses, is 

 remarkable for an immense accumulation of ashes around it, several 

 feet in thickness, plentifully mixed with shells, and the horns and 

 bones of deer and other animals. The building itself has been only 

 very partially explored, but many curious relics have been recovered 

 from the surrounding debris. Among these are circular discs of slate, 

 similar to those found in Kent's Hole Cave, a large tusk of a wild 

 boar, horns of the red deer, and numerous implements made of horn. 

 But not the least curious of these primitive relics was a box — already 

 referred to, — constructed of stones laid together, in the form of a 

 miniature cist, within which lay about two dozen oyster shells, each 

 pierced in the centre with a hole about the size of a shilling. Oysters, 

 it may be remarked, are rare in Orkney. They now occur only at two 

 places, Deersound and Frith, the nearest of which is eight miles 

 distant from Skaill ; while the osteological remains which accompanied 

 them are those of long extinct Orkney mammals. There is no tradi- 

 tion of the presence either of the deer or the boar in the Orkney 

 islands, unless the names of the Deerness headland and the neigh- 

 bouring sound be assumed as topographical memorials of the presence 

 of the former within Norse or Saxon times. It is scarcely possible, 

 indeed, to conceive of the existence of such fei'ce nahii-ce for any 

 length of time, within so small an area, after the occupation of these 

 islands by a human population. 



