Pvn H,i I'UitlS

MYTILUS.
109
ling," being evidently a corruption of the Icelandic
word " Kraeklingur," having the same signification. The
hinge-teeth are usually three or four only.
often distorted.
The shell is
The mussel has been from time immemorial a fa-
vourite article of food in this and other maritime coun-
tries. Pennant, after a preface of " Ne fraudentur
gloria sua littora," especially praises
those from Lan-
cashire. Large quantities are regularly brought to
Billingsgate from the Dutch coast. A small kind,
called in
"
Brittany Cayeu," is chiefly in request there,
"
Potage
being esteemed more delicate and digestible.
aux moules " is by no means to be despised at the table
d'hote of the Hotel de PEpee at Quimper. Herr
Adolphe Meyer informs me that boughs of elm and
other trees are laid down in the Bay of Kiel, and taken
up at the end of three, four, or five years, between
December and March, being
then covered with fine
mussels. These laden boughs are sold by weight, and
the shell-harvest is sent into the interior of Germany,
where it is in great request. He adds that the mussel
is not reckoned wholesome in summer. Many
cases of
serious illness, and even of death, have resulted from its
occasionally deleterious qualities. "The faculty" seem
to be completely at fault as to the nature of this poison.
By some it is attributed to the mussels living among
putrescent matters,
as in docks and near the outlet of
public sewers ; by others to their feeding on the spawn
of starfish, which are well known to be poisonous ; by
others to their being too freely eaten and causing a sur-
feit, or to a morbid state of the system in the persons
eating them ; by a few to their imbibing
into their
tissues a solution of copper; and Delle Chiaje showed
that in many instances it was owing to these mollusks