You would scarcely recognise in this shell, or in the Tiger Cowry, that
one so often sees on chimney-pieces, the model of an ordinary convolute
spiral shell, such as the snail or the whelk. But in infancy and youth
the Cowry is a shell manifestly of such a character, scarcely to be
distinguished from the Olives and Volutes; a shell with a distinct
spire, a long wide aperture, and a thin-edged outer lip. But when
the animal has arrived at mature age, a sudden deposition of shelly
matter takes place on the lip, which is greatly thickened, and which
expands above so as to conceal the spire, bending inward at the same
time and approaching the inner lip, so as to reduce the aperture
to a very narrow line. Finally, a thick coat of enamel, or glossy
porcellaneous lime, is spread over the entire surface of the shell,
from the narrow aperture to the back-line, which coat takes the form of
those transverse folds which are so characteristic of the species and
so elegant.
Here, clinging to the perpendicular wall of rock, sheltered snugly
by an overshadowing stone, which I have just removed, is a lovely
specimen of the Squin or Scallop.[9] In the ages of monkery, when
men’s eyes were more directed to the land where the blessed Lord Jesus
once sojourned than to the place where He now is, and pilgrimage to an
earthly country was more valued than that to a heavenly, this shell
affixed to the hat was the accepted sign that the wearer had visited
Jerusalem; and received the homage of sanctity that such a pilgrim
claimed.
“He quits his cell, the pilgrim staff he bore,
And fixed the scallop in his hat before.”[10]
[Illustration: