146 BUCCINID^. 



coasts. The whelk affords an illustration of the lex talionis ; fishes 

 in their turn devour it with equal greediness. I have seen 

 between thirty and forty shells of B. undatu-ni extracted from the 

 stomach of a single cod. After the shell has been cleared out 

 and ejected \)j the fish, it makes a convenient habitation for the 

 hermit-crab. Other nations have not quite so great a fancy as 

 ours for eating the whelk ; perhaps it is an indigenous taste ; for 

 when the Romans were in this country, they seem to have 

 acquired it — being one which they could not gratify in Italy, 

 Shells of B. undatum, mixed with those of the oyster, have been 

 noticed among the ruins of a Roman station at Richborough. 

 At the enthronization feast of William Warham, Archbishop of 

 Canterbur}^, on the 9th of March, 1504, there were provided 

 '8000 whelks at 5s. per 1000.' In the shell-fish market at Billings- 

 gate the present species goes by the name of the 'white 'or 

 ' common ' whelk, in contradistinction to Fusiis antiquus^ which 

 is there called the ' red ' or ' almond ' whelk. My obliging 

 informant, Mr. Baxter, says, ' Wilks must be sold the same day 

 we receive them at market in the summer, being the day after 

 they are caught; if the supply is greater than the demand, we 

 boil them, and they keep good for several days.' Evidence was 

 given before a select committee of the House of Commons in 

 the session of 1866, on the 'Whitstable oyster-fisherj^ extension 

 Bill,' that the whelk-fishery on a sandy flat in that bay yielded 

 £12,000 a year — part of the produce being disposed of in the 

 London market for food, and the rest sent to the cod-fishing 

 banks for bait. They are seldom eaten in the northern part of 

 our Isles. At Dieppe and Nantes they may occasionally be 

 seen exposed for sale in the fish-markets. The embrj'^ologj' of 

 B. undatum has been investigated by Baster and many other 

 writers. Its curious spawn-cells are figured in Ellis's Corallines 

 as '■ Alcyonium seu Vesicularia marina of Bauhin ;' they are 

 also called ' Sea wash-balls,' because of their being used instead 

 of soap by sailors to wash their hands (xvii, 4). Dr. Johnston 

 compares this vesicular mass to the nest of the bumble-bee. It 

 is composed of numerous cartilaginous pouches, of the shape 

 and size of a large split pea, piled irregularly one upon another, 

 and attached by their edges at the base. Cailliaud counted 544 

 of these cells in one of the spawn-masses. Each cell contains 

 at first several hundred eggs, which are afterwards so greatly 

 reduced in number that only trom fifteen to thirty fry come to 

 maturity. The process by which this reduction takes place has 

 been disputed by Scandinavian and English physiologists, not 

 less as to Buccinum than with respect to Purpura. Koren and 

 Danielssen state that the eggs are first spherical, that they after- 

 wards separate into distinct portions, and then amalgamate or 

 agglomerate and assume a different shape. Sir John Lubbock, 



