34S JOURNAL OF CONCHOLOGY, VOL. 9, NO. II, JULY, I9OO. 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A CONCHOLOGIST. 



(A Fragment). 



' ; Were these shells ever alive?" I remember once asking a sailor who 

 had sauntered into a shop where I was apprentice, with a little bundle 

 of cowries. "Alive!" said he, "I believe you, my boy, every one on 

 them." How distinctly I recall to mind the chuckle with which he 

 opened out his double knotted blue calico handkerchief on the 

 counter. Whether any doubt lingered in the sailor's mind as to their 

 once living existence I did not stop to consider. His answer 

 and the sight of the brilliantly enamelled shells made a strong 

 impression on me, and the purchase of them for a few pence was 

 the starting point of my conchological pursuits — I had already begun 

 to be a collector of objects of virtu. My apron-hook, which I 

 still keep as a reminiscence of the sweets of my early life, was 

 made with a choice coin, an Oliver Cromwell shilling. My master, 



the eccentric G , was also a "collector," along with the business 



of a grocer Not long afterwards I came to know that my 



shells really had been alive, in the sense that bones have life in the 

 living quadruped or bird; I learned that they were the work of an 

 animal whose skeleton is developed outwardly, and which being 

 exposed to light and heat, while secreted from the glands of a calci- 

 fying organ called the mantle assumes fantastic shapes, and is painted 

 with all the colours of the rainbow. It happened that among those to 



whom I exhibited my treasures was one W , a name well-known 



to connoisseurs in after days by a beautiful little cowry, named in 

 honour of his loving industry. It is a goodly practice among 

 naturalists thus to preserve reminiscences of each other. Well do 1 

 remember the pride with which in an early stage of my career- 1 

 learned that a new Australian cowry had been named after myself ! 

 Cowries have always been favourite shells with the conchologist. On 



looking at my little collection W began to dilate with zeal upon 



their formation, and describing with glowing interest how that the 

 animal occupant extended a mantle from out the aperture on either 

 side covering the entire shell which it had formed by the secretion of 

 successive layers of highly vitrified enamel. " But come and sup with 

 me," said my new acquaintance, "and you shall see many other curious 

 specimens, and I will tell you stories of their life and habits that will 



surprise you, and interest us both." Good W , with fingers dyed 



as though they had been dipped in Tartarus, was a compositor in the 

 well-known printing office of Messrs. Spottiswoode, and he lodged at a 

 house in Fetter Lane. It was my own lot to be bound apprentice to 

 a grocer on Ludgate Hill, so that like the slug we seldom quitted our 



