THE CULT OF SHELLS 65 
suggested by listening to the shell-murmur. For 
here is a conch with a hole at the top or towards the 
top; it will not sing as the others do; let some 
breath be blown into it—for breath spells life— 
and the strong-lunged youth had his surprise! In 
response to his pulmonary blast there came forth a 
trumpet-call—resonant, vibratory, wailing, terrific 
—like the voice of the wind-god. It is even now 
an instructive experience to get a strong-lunged 
expert to blow a first-class shell-trumpet in the 
quiet of an academic museum after hours. A force- 
ful, insurgent, fog-horn call, with a volume that 
makes one a little ashamed, with cadences that 
startle—and how all the “curiosities” from Ceylon 
and Malay, from California and Madagascar, seem 
to reverberate! For it is an old, old story. The 
important fact was the vast effectiveness of the 
shell-trumpet’s voice, likewise the disproportion 
between effect and cause. So the Triton, or some 
other conch, was blown to summon men to the 
temple and to the battle; it was used for emotional 
effects (and for symbolic reasons) at marriages and 
initiations; and it was not perplexing to our fore- 
fathers that what was official and symbolic one day 
should be a fog-horn or a cattle-call the next. What 
served to scare off evil spirits would also serve 
to frighten thieves. The shell-trumpet was effective 
and it was also beautiful. 
The Minoans of Crete were the first to manu- 
facture the famous purple dye from sea-snails like 
Murex and Purpura; the Phcenicians followed and 
