388 SOME ETHNOGRAPHIC PHASES OF CONCHOLOGY. 



up by the sea. In refutation of such an hypothesis, we have the fact 

 that flint arrow-heads, stone axes, and fragments of Indian pottery 

 have been detected through the mass. The shell-fish heaped up at 

 Cannon's Point must, from their nature, have been caught at a dis- 

 tance, on one of the outer islands, and it is well known that the 

 Indians were in the habit of returning with what they had taken, from 

 their fishing excursions on the coast, to some good hunting ground, 

 such as St. Simon's afforded." This remarkable "Monte Testaceo " 

 of the New World is interesting to us as one of the melancholy memo- 

 morials of its aboriginal races, already vanished, or hastening to 

 extinction ; while in this case the edible treasures of the deep, unlike 

 those of the cleared forests, still remain to supply the means of sub- 

 sistence, or to furnish coveted luxuries for the tables, of the old 

 Indian's sup planters. 



Another interesting class of illustrations of the subject in hand 

 might be derived from tracing in the diverse applications of conve- 

 nient or graceful univalve and bivalve shells to purposes of ornament 

 or use, affinities in the tastes and ideas of man under the most diverse 

 social conditions, and in ages widely remote from each other. In the 

 mother-of-pearl work, and other applications of shells in modern 

 ornamentation, we have examples of art which find their analogous 

 types in the rudest traces of primitive taste and artistic skill. Still 

 further in the adaptation of many beautiful marine shells as brooches, 

 jewel cases, drinking cups, bowls, and lamps, and even as reliquaries 

 and fonts, we may study the matured development of such applica- 

 tions of these spoils of the ocean to the purposes of personal adorn- 

 ment or of convenient use. But it would tempt us into too wide a 

 field to illustrate all such economic and artistic adaptations of shells 

 from the fiisiis cmtiquus, still used as a lamp in the humblest cottages 

 of the Zetlanders, to the varieties of the exquisitely graceful and 

 often richly jewelled nautilus cup, or to the Tridacna gig as emploj^ed 

 in churches for benitiers or holy water stoups, and the still larger 

 bivalve, the Chama gigas, which may be seen tastefully adapted, 

 not only as the basin for the ornamental garden fountain, but even as 

 the singularly appropriate and beautiful baptismal font. 



Among the charges of medieval heraldry, the scallop shell, pecten 

 JacohcBus, plays a prominent part as the ancient badge of pilgrimage. 

 Fuller, in his Church History, repeatedly refers to such heraldic 

 bearings j noting, for example, in his own quaint way, in reference to 



