130 
EDIBLE BRITISH MOLLUSKS. 
presently purple in the sun.* Lister, in 1686, mentions 
the discovery of a shellfish. Purpura Anglicana, on the 
shores of the Severn, in which there is a vein, contain- 
ing a juice, giving the delicate and durable tincture 
of the rich Tyrian purple. A writer in the ^ Annual 
Register^ for 1760 says that, being ‘^at a gentleman^s 
house in the west of Ireland,^^ he ^^took particular no- 
tice of the gown of the lady of the house. It was a 
muslin flowered with the most beautiful violet colour. . . . 
She told me it was her own work, and took me to the 
seaside, where she gathered some little shells ; . . . beating 
them open and extracting the liquor with the point of a 
clean pen, she marked some spots directly before me.^^ 
He adds : — I suppose a hundred fishes would not pro- 
duce a drop as large as a pea.'^ Richard of Cirencester 
also mentions as a production of Britain, shells from 
which is prepared a scarlet dye of the most beautiful 
hue, which never fades from the effect of sun or rain/^ 
It is also stated in the ^Athenaeum ’ of July 20, 1850, 
that the Nicaraguan Indians use a purple dye prepared 
from shellfish. 
Pliny says that there are two kinds of fish that pro- 
duce the purple-dye, the Buccinum and the Purpura, 
purple, or pelagia.f Murex trunculus is generally con- 
sidered to have yielded it. 
We all know the story of the discovery of the Por- 
phyra shellfish, by the dog of a Tyrian nymph loved by 
Hercules ; which having picked up some of these shells, 
and crushed them with its teeth, its mouth became 
stained with purple-dye. It is scarcely probable that it 
* Neumann’s * Chemistry,’ p. 510 ; the Memoirs of the French Aca- 
demy for 1736. See Philosophical Transactions, No. 178. 
f Pliny, Nat. Hist. vol. ii. bk. ix. chap. 67. 
