44 ISfatural History of Molluscous Anmials : — 



the Tellina Gari Lin. ; and in South America they use a large 

 muscle, 8 in. long and of excellent flavour, but the name of 

 which is unknown to me. " They are often salted and dried ; 

 after which, they are strung on slender rushes, and, in this 

 manner, large quantities are exported." * This practice re- 

 minds me of a somewhat similar one adopted by the Africans in 

 the neighbourhood of the river Zaire or Congo. They take large 

 quantities of a species of Mya from out the mud round Kam- 

 penzey Island, and, as in a raw state the animals are without 

 flavour, they stick them on wooden skewers, as the French do 

 frogs, and half dry them. They pass thus into a state of semi- 

 putrefaction, become entirely to the taste of the negroes, and 

 form an important object of traffic, f The natives of New Hol- 

 land and New Zealand did, at the time of their discovery, use 

 the Chama gigas (Jig. 6. c), a very large shell, a pair of the 

 valves of which were presented, as natural curiosities, to 

 Francis I. by the Venetians; and which Louis XV., more 

 zealous, as he has himself taken care to let us know, for the 

 glory of God, destined to hold holy water in the magnificent 

 church of St. Sulpice in Paris, where they to this day ac- 

 tually serve the purpose of baptismal fonts. | Captain Cook 

 tells us that it sometimes attains a size so great that two men 

 are required to carry it ; and containing full 20 lbs. of good 

 meat, it often fiirnished him and his fellow-adventurers an 

 esteemed repast. Bruce mentions the same species as being 

 found in the Red Sea, but in this respect he is probably 

 mistaken. The fish of his shell, however, are very whole- 

 some, and have a. peppery taste, a circumstance so much the 

 more convenient, that they carry that ingredient of spice 

 along with them for sauce, with which travellers seldom bur- 

 then themselves. § 



Of the univalved shells I have not much to say. You may 

 have noticed the periwinkle (Turbo littoreus) (Jig. 7. a) and 

 common whelk (^uccinum lapillus' Lin.) exposed for sale, in 

 large quantities, in the fish-shops of the metropolis |1 ; and they 

 frequently furnish to the poorer classes of our sea-coast towns 

 and villages a repast, perhaps sufficiently wholesome, and 

 certainly not destitute of relish. But, even to them, these 

 may be regarded merely in the light of luxuries : it is far 



* Stevenson's Narrative of Twenty Years' Residence in South America, 

 vol. i. p. 123. 



f Tuckey's Narrative, &c., p. 55. 



X Smith's Tour on the Continent, vol. i. p. 82. 



^ Bruce's Travels, &c., vol. ii. p. 112. 



II They do riot appear to have been so common in the days of Samuel 

 Johnson. In his Journey to the Western Islands he says, " Here I saw what 

 I had never seen before, limpets and muscles in their natural state."^(p. 295.) 



