Pvn H,i I'UitlS

PECTEN. /O
for food. Old fishermen have a notion that it is taken
in greater quantities after a fall of snow ; but, if true,
this is difficult of explanation, because a scallop never
burrows or lives anywhere but on the surface of the
sea-bed. They used to be plentiful in Lulworth Bay on
the Dorset coast ;
but now they are rarely found alive.
I was told that the breed had been exterminated there
by an epicurean officer of the coast-guard. The late
Major Martin would allow any conchologist to dredge
as much as he pleased in the bays of the Connemara
coast, provided he only took useless shells, such as
Tellina balaustina ; but all the big clams (P. maximus)
were reserved for the table at Ballynahinch Castle.
This kind of preserve would be much less expensive to
keep than a good pheasant-cover or a well-stocked moor,
and it would not be so liable to be poached. Nor were
the shells less prized in the days when Ossian sung.
The flat valves were the plates, the hollow ones the
drinking-cups of Fingal and his heroes, and "the joy of
the shell went round/'' The animal of P. maximus has
long attracted the attention of naturalists. As Mr.
Clark observed, " When the valves are opened, and the
mottled surfaces of the double margins of each valve are
in conjunction, and the various circles of filaments and
cirri fullv exserted in a shallow basin of sea-water,
scarcely possible
it is
to conceive a more beautiful and in-
teresting appearance/' The animal is small compared
with the size of the shell. This is also the case with
other kinds of Pecten ; and it may be owing to the
expansibility of the organs, which require much space
for their action. Donovan mentions a strange idea,
which was entertained by "modern as well as ancient
authors," that the way in which scallops leap
or raise
themselves up is by forcing the under valve against
e2