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The Museum Gazette 



H. Scallop Shells (Pecten maximus). The flat valves are 

 used as plates, and the hollow ones for skimming milk, also 

 as drinking vessels. 



I. Whelk (Fusus antiquus). Used as a lamp in some parts 

 of Northern Europe, being suspended horizontally with a 

 wick along the siphon-channel. 



i| a The Money Cowry {Cypvcea moneta). Still used in some 

 districts on the West Coast of Africa as a trade currency. In 

 1840 they were imported into England in great numbers and 

 sold to African traders, the price being £20 per ton. 



Km Window-glass Shell (Ostvea placenta). Used in Japan 

 and the southern parts of China as a substitute for glass. 



L a A small valve of the Giant Clam (Tridacna gigas), the 

 largest known bivalved mollusc. Large specimens are used 

 as basins, &c. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



GOETHE, speaking of the delights of youth, wrote : " Jugend ist 

 Trunkenheit ohne Wein." The same idea is to be found in Aristotle : 

 " They are sanguine in hope, for like persons who are drank with 

 wine they are inflamed by Nature" (Wright's "Life of Fitzgerald," 

 vol. i., 158). 



Local Museums. — The late Mr. Toynbee published anonymously 

 — or rather in the name of the Treasurer of the Wimbledon Museum 

 Committee — a little book entitled " Hints on the Formation of Local 

 Museums." Although his book contains, as a matter of necessity, 

 much in commendation of educational arrangements in all museums, 

 it still has as its essential idea the restriction of the work of collectors 

 to local objects. One of the rules of the Club was, " No object to be 

 received into the Museum unless found within a radius of five miles 

 from the Parish Church/- This little book is, we believe, now out 

 of print. It was a very valuable pioneer effort in the direction of 

 genuine Natural History work. 



