OF THE ANIMAL FRAME 



117 



recrement ; and, so far as these experiments go, they support the opinion 

 of a generation of lime, and that in very considerable abundance, the weight 

 secreted appearing to have been five times as much as that introduced into 

 the stomach. But to determine the question incontrovertibly requires so 

 nice a precision in the mode of conducting such experiments, as from a variety 

 of circumstances, it seems almost impossible to attain. 



It is to the power which the living ptinciple possesses, either of secreting 

 or generating the substance of lime by its natural action, that we are indebted 

 for all those elegant shells that enrich the cabinet of the conchologist, and 

 seem to vie with each other in the beauty of their spots, the splendour and 

 irridescence of their colours, and the graceful inflection of their wreaths. 

 And it is to the power which the same principle possesses, of forming this 

 substance by a morbid action, that we owe not only those unsightly excres- 

 cences I have just mentioned, but some of the most costly ornaments of su- 

 perstition or luxury : those agate-formed bezoards which in Spain, Portugal, 

 and even Holland were lately worn as amulets against contagion, and which 

 have been let out for hire at a ducat a day, and been sold as high as three 

 hundred guineas a piece ; and those delicate pearls which constitute an object 

 of desire among the fair sex of every country, and which give additional 

 attraction to the most finished form. 



The first are usually obtained from the stomach or intestines of the goat or 

 antelope ; in the latter case being called oriental bezoards, and possessing 

 the highest value. The most esteemed are those obtained from the stomach 

 of that species of the oriental antelope called the gazel, to which the Persian 

 and Arabian poets are perpetually adverting whenever they stand in need of 

 an image to express elegance of form, fleetness of speed, or captivating soft- 

 ness of the eyes. The second are obtained from the inside of the shells of 

 the mytilus margaritiferus and mya margaritifera, pearl-muscle and pearl- 

 oyster ; the former, producing the largest and consequently the richest, is 

 found most commonly on the coast of Ceylon ; the latter not unfrequently 

 on that of our own country, and was traced some centuries ago in great 

 abundance in the river Conway in Wales. Linnaeus is said to have been ac- 

 quainted with a process by which he could excite at pleasure a secretion of 

 new pearls in the pearl-oysters which he kept in his reservoirs. It is gene- 

 rally supposed to be a diseased secretion somewhat similar to that of the 

 stone in the human bladder. 



The murex tritonis, or musical murex, is here also worth noticing. Its 

 calcareous shell is ventricose, oblong, smooth, with rounded whorls, toothed 

 aperture, and short beak, about fifteen inches long, white, and appearing as if 

 covered with brown, yellow, and black scales. It inhabits India and the 

 South Seas, and is used by the New-Zealanders as a musical shell, and by 

 the Africans and many nations of the East as a military horn. 



Before we quit this subject, I will just observe, that it is to the same tribe 

 we are indebted for our nacre or mother-of-pearL vi^hi<?h is nothing more than 

 the innermost layers of the shell, in which the morbid works or concretions 

 which we call pearls lie imbedded ; and that to the same order of shells the 

 Indians owe their wampum or pieces of common money, which are formed of 

 the Venus mercenaries or clam-shell, found in a fossil state; and that our own 

 heralds owe the scallop, ostrea maxima, that so often figures in the field of 

 our family arms, and was formerly worn by pilgrims on the hat or coat, in 

 its natural state, as a mark that they had crossed the sea for the purpose of 

 paying their devotions at the Holy Land. 



From these facts and observations we cannot but behold the great import- 

 ance of lime in the construction of the animal frame, the extensive use which 

 is made of it, and the variety of purposes to which it is applied : combined in 

 different proportions with gluten and albumen it affords equally the means of 

 strength and protection, produces the bones within and the shells without, 

 the external and internal skeleton, and is discoverable in every class, order, 

 and even genus of animals, except a very few of the soft worms and insects 

 in their first and unfinished state. 



