Chap. XI.] 



TUKBINELLA RAPA. 



371 



rapa, to be exported to India, where it is still sawn 

 into rings and worn as anklets and bracelets by the 

 women of Hindustan. Another use for these shells 

 is their conversion into wind instruments, which are 

 sounded in the temples on all occasions of ceremony. A 

 chank, in which the whorls, instead of running from left 

 to right, as in the ordinary shell, are reversed, and run 

 from right to left, is regarded with such reverence that 

 a specimen formerly sold for its weight in gold, but one 

 may now be had for four or five pounds. Cosmas Indico- 

 pleustes, writing in the fifth century, describes a place 

 on the west coast of Ceylon, which he calls Marallo, and 

 says it produced " koxKlovs" which Thevenot translates 

 "oysters;" in which case Marallo might be conjectured 

 to be Bentotte, near Colombo, which yields the best 

 edible " oysters" in Ceylon. 1 But the shell in question 

 was most probably the chank, and Marallo was Mantotte, 

 off which it is found in great numbers. 2 In fact, two 

 centuries later Abouzeyd, an Arab, who wrote an account 

 of the trade and productions of India, speaks of these 

 shells by the name they still bear, which he states to 

 be schenek 3 ; but " schenek " is not an Arabic word, and 

 is merely an attempt to spell the local term, chank, in 

 Arabic characters. 



1 Cosmas Indico-pletjstes, in dia they had found oysters a foot 

 Thevenot' s ed. t. i. p. 21. long. Pliny says: " In Indico mari 



2 At Kottiar, near Trincomalie, Alexandri rerum auctores pedalia 

 I was struck with the prodigious inveniri prodidere." — Nat. Hist. 

 size of the edible oysters, which lib. xxxii. ch. 31. Darwin says, 

 were brought to us at the rest- that amongst the fossils of Pata- 

 house. The shell of one of these gonia, he found " a massive gigantic 

 measured a little more than eleven oyster, sometimes even a foot in 

 inches in length, by half as many diameter." — Nat Voy., ch. viii. 

 broad: thus unexpectedly attest- 3 Abouzeyd, Voyages Arabes, 

 ing the correctness of one of the #c, t. i. p. 6 ; Eeinaud, Memoire 

 stories related by the historians of sur PInde, $c. p. 222. 

 Alexander's expedition, that in In- 



B B 2 



