Pvn H,i I'UitlS

292 CARDIIDiE.
ton were a quantity of cockle-shells of different sizes,
rubbed down until they were reduced nearly to rings.
An impudent hoax was played on the learned Wer-
nerian Society in 1825 by a pretended " discovery of live
cockles in peat-moss, at a great distance from the sea,
and much above its present level." The name of the
place where this phenomenon
is said to have been ob-
served wr as Cocklesbury near Greta Bridge, and some
highly ingenious arguments were adduced to show how
the cockles got into the moss, and contrived to exist for
centuries out of their native element. It need scarcely
be said that the writer of the article was imposed upon
by a scientific wag. Other Scotchmen have been equally
credulous. Buchanan relates a strange notion, which
he had heard was prevalent in Barra, one of the Western
Isles, that the cockle originates from a freshwater bivalve
(probably a species of Pisidium) called the " seed"
by the inhabitants, who supposed that it grew larger in
the sea, after being carried down by the river.
According to Searles Wood,
fossil state has sixteen synonyms.
9. C. mi'nimum *, Philippi.
C. edule in its recent and
C. minimum, Phil. Moll. Sic. i.
p. 51, and ii. p. 38, t. xiv. f. 18. C. Suecicum,
F. & H. ii.
p. 33, pi.
xxxii. f. 6.
Body of a gelatinous consistency and whitish colour.
Shell roundish- oval, with an oblique outline, convex
(especially behind), thin but nearly opaque, rather glossy :
sculpture, 28-30 delicate and flattened longitudinal ribs, more
or less covered throughout with minute crowded arched scales,
which are sometimes arranged in a double row, giving a sca-
brous appearance to the surface ; furrows rather narrow and
slight, crossed by microscopical striae, which are three times as
numerous as the costal scales, and in younger and less perfect
* Smallest.