Shell- Trumpets a7td their Distribution. 69 



]5iit that is still more surprising which I have read in 

 Plutarch, — that the onion becomes green and flourishing 

 as the moon wastes awa_\', and dries up again while the 

 moon increases ; and this is the cause, say the Egyptian 

 priests, why the Pelusians do not eat the onion ; because 

 it alone of all ]3otherbs has its turns of diminishing and 

 increasing contrary to those of the moon." (Johnston, o/>. 

 cit., pp. 336-7). Kirckringius, it is stated, " knew a young 

 gentlewoman whose beauty depended upon the lunar force ; 

 insomuch, that at full moon she was plump and handsome, 

 but in the decrease of the planet so wan and ill-favoured, 

 that she was ashamed to go abroad, till the return of the 

 new moon gradually gave fulness to her face, and attrac- 

 tion to her charms. If this seems strange, it is indeed no 

 more than an influence of the same kind with that which 

 the moon has always been observed to have upon shell- 

 fish, and some other living creatures." He quotes Lucilius, 

 and the words of Manilius : 



" Si submersa fretis, concharum et carcere clausa. 

 Ad luna; motum variant animalia corpus." 

 " This opinion," says Johnston, "continued to be for long 

 a part of the popular creed, and even so late as 1666 it 

 had in nothing been impaired, for, in the ' Philosophical 

 Transactions ' of that year, travellers to India are solicited 

 to inquire, ' whether those shell-fishes that are in these 

 parts plump and in season at the full moon, and lean and 

 out of season at the new, are found to have contrar\- con- 

 stitutions in the East Indies' — a nice question, to which 

 the answer returned was, ' I find it so here, by experience 

 at Batavia, in oysters and crabs.' " (Johnston, op. cit., p. 

 337)- 



