300 The Commercial Products of the Sea. 



also often used in North Wales by the farmers to call their 

 labourers, and in Lithuania and Muscovy by the herdsmen 

 to assemble their cattle. In the West Indies the common 

 fountain-shell, a species of Strombus, is also used to call in 

 the negroes from the sugar-cane fields ; the interval of 

 "shell-blow," as it is termed, being the dinner-hour. In 

 the East Indies chank shells are used for the same purpose 

 by the Brahmin priests, and the great Triton [Triton 

 tritonis) is so employed by the Pacific Islanders, who make 

 a hole in the lip and then use it as a speaking-trumpet. 

 The mountain-priests of Japan, according to Kaempfer, 

 wear a kind of Buccinum, a smooth and white shell with 

 beautiful red spots and lines. It hangs down from their 

 girdle and serves them as a trumpet, having for this pur- 

 pose a tube fastened to the end, through which they blow 

 upon the approach of travellers, to beg their charity. It 

 sounds not unlike a cowherd's horn. Mtirex colossus is 

 another shell often used as a trumpet. 



In the South Kensington Museum there is a powder- 

 flask formed of a Murex shell, mounted in silver inlaid with 

 acanthus ornament in niello work, probably of the seven- 

 teenth or eighteenth century, and in the India Museum there 

 is a powder-flask made of a Turbo shell, mounted. 



Of late among the curious uses to which the Turbo 

 and some other shells have been applied here is for pipe- 

 bowls. Uncivilized tribes have been before us even in this 

 utilization ; for Adams, in his " Voyage of the Samarang" 

 tells us that among the Bashee group, and more particularly 

 on the island of Ibayat, the natives form very elegant and 

 commodious pipes from different species of shells, the 

 columella and septa of the convolutions being broken down, 

 and a short ebony stem inserted into a hole at the apex 

 of the spire. Pipes of this kind are formed from the Mitra 



