PROCEEDINGS 
OF THE 
rfetal lliituratifit^ ptpij- 
Vol. III. JANUARY, 1 868. No. i. 
GENERAL MEETING, 
Thursday, January 2nd, 1868.— Mr. S. H. Swayne, M.R.C.S., 
in the chair. 
The Hon. Secretary, Mr. A. Leipner, read the minutes of the last 
meeting, which were agreed to. 
Mr. Henry K. Jordan, F.G.S., then read the following paper on 
"The Whelk (Buccinum undatum); its development, habits, and 
distribution." 
The whelk is a well-known and highly valuable mollusk. As an article of food 
and for its use to man, it must rank next to the oyster. 
It abounds in all the British seas, and dead shells may be picked up on every 
strand at high- water mark, cast up by the storm. 
It is caught in vast numbers in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, and is 
either used for cod fishing (for which purpose it is the most valuable bait), or is 
sent to Billingsgate market to be sold for food. 
The London poor are very fond of the whelk. Visitors" to Billingsgate shell- 
fish market, in the morning, m ay see hundreds of hawkers carrying away their 
purchases ; these they take home and boil, and in the evening they go out into the 
streets and display their luxuries on a stall, opposite a tavern or some favourite 
corner. The fish are extracted from the shell and placed in little saucers, and 
sold at the rate of four or five a penny. Who of us is there, that knows London, 
but has watched the stall- keeper retailing shell-fish to his numerous customers ? 
Nowhere is the whelk eaten so extensively as in London. This place alone causes 
employment to many scores or hundreds of fishermen at Ramsgate, Harwich, 
