is petty-wrinkle made harmonious; and in
the streets we hear it in the short and
practical form of the cry, Periwink—periwink.
Sabot, or little wooden shoe, is the name
which the French give to the periwinkle—a
name suggested by a rough resemblance.
The learned name given by Ferussac,
Littorina littoralis, means merely that this
shellfish lives upon the coast. The Linnæan name
Turbo signifies a twisted shell; and the
Saxon name has a similar signification,
meaning something awry and wrinkled. The
French, who are not at all happy in calling
the periwinkle a sabot, hit off his description
better when they call him a snail with a
round mouth. There are white, yellow,
brown, and red periwinkles. There are kinds
of periwinkles the mouths of whose shells
cause them to be called the silver-mouthed
and the golden-mouthed (argyrostomos and
chrysostomos), as if they were eloquent
fathers of the church. There is a crowned
periwinkle—of course there is! The zig-
zag periwinkle is a very pretty dark
blue one, with white zig-zag streaks. Indeed,
there are nearly a hundred different
kinds of them, of which about eighty are
living and fifteen are fossil species. I have
read in books concerning periwinkles which
forsake the shore and the rocks, the tangles
and the sea-girdles, and betake themselves to
the trees and fields. It is by night that they
are said to seek the change of green for
brown pastures. There is nothing common
or mean in nature, the commonness and
meanness being in ignorant human minds;
and the periwinkle, when his genus is
studied, inspires every kind of interest.

There is greatness in periwinkles. Their
endurance of all climates and all weathers is
wonderful. The periwinkle is the conchylion of
the breakers. Inhabiting all shores and defying
all weathers, he loves especially to be wetted
by the spray of the tidal waves. He places
himself where he can receive the breakers,
having a structure adapted to such a habitat.
The perfectly round mouth of his thick globose
shell has a horny lid, and he breathes
through a pair of comb-like gills. M.
Deshayes was astonished at the endurance of
Littorina littoralis in Africa. All the year
round, every vicissitude of season, the spring
and autumn torrents, and the heats of summer,
when the waves seldom reached the
rocks, were all bravely and wonderfully borne
by the defiant little periwinkles. When
human feet cannot walk upon hot rocks
scorched by the sun of the tropics, the
periwinkles endure the roasting with impunity.
Dr. Harvey, of Dublin, found a kind of
periwinkle, Littorina rudis, two hundred feet up
among the sea-cliffs of the West of Ireland,
in pools of spray and rain water. There,
their shells had become thinner, and the
grooves between the spires deeper than usual.

The common periwinkle, like the common
limpet, is universally eaten; and these
conchylions are companions in the olive zone,
upon the rocks, and in human stomachs.
Coast boys everywhere around the British
islands employ their Saturday afternoons in
summer time in finding and roasting
periwinkles. "Dazz ye," the Devonshire boys
say, "isn't it fine fun?" When work and
school are over, the boys are allowed "to go
a-picking 'winkles." They separate into a
party which gathers the winkles, and a party
which kindles a fire of drift-wood and sea-
weeds. The lid of an old tin kettle, resting
upon stones, is soon heated. When the shells
crack, the winkles are cooked. Every good
boy brings home a lot in the corner of his
apron to regale his family on the Sunday.

The brown pastures of the plant-eating
limpets and winkles are honoured with the
presence of the animal-eating purpura and
nassa. Diplomacy has established the rule
that respect is to be measured by the power
of destruction, and consequently peculiar
deference is due to conchylions who can devour
their fellow-creatures. No sly fling was
intended at the imperial purple, I suppose,
when the white whelk was called purpura.
The Greeks and Romans did not conceal a
sarcasm in a fable when they said a dog's
lips were dyed purple after eating the mollusks
of these shells. Purpura and nassa are
armed with a spiny and augur-like tongue,
which pierces the shells of their victims.

The animal and shell of purpura resemble
the whelk. The purpura makes the transition
between the buccinum and the murex.
The white whelks, I repeat it in English,
are the link between the Whelk kind and
the Venus's Comb kind of shell-fish. The
Venus's Comb can dissolve the spines of the
comb whenever it is necessary to enlarge the
shell. The mantles of all the conchylions
secrete their shells; only a few species,
however, are known to possess the power of
dissolving them. M. Deshayes says, the
murex and the purpura have the property of
making the tubercles disappear which they
had secreted some time previously. The
white whelks are found in all seas. In the
Australian seas the species are numerous,
while in the northern seas there are only
four or five of them.

The fishermen call the nassa the dog-
whelk. As for the name nassa, it seems to
have been derived from the resemblance of
the shell to the twisted willow handle of a
net used by fishermen. The animal part of the
dog-whelk is much flattened, with a locomotive
extending outwards beyond the shell in
all directions, especially in front, where it is
large and angular, while it narrows behind.
When the sand conchylions, called mactra,
quit their burrows, the nassa pounce upon
them, pierce their thin angular shells, and
extract the flesh through the aperture. The
siphon of the nassa is seen behind his pair of
long feelers, about the middle of which are
his eyes.