. Cassell's natural history. Animals; Animal behavior. 206 NATURAL lUSTORT. Cyprsea shells are woni as a head-dress by the natives of New Guinea. The time would fail in which to tell all the various methods used in applying shells as ornaments to the head, dress, and person. Every book of travels in Africa, America, or the South Sea Islands teems with such illustrations. Nor does India furnish an exception to the rule ; for there the female children have their arms and ankles, from infancy, encircled with broad shell-bauds, cut fi-cni the whorls of the gi-eat TurhineHa 2>(/rum, and the Sepo
. Cassell's natural history. Animals; Animal behavior. 206 NATURAL lUSTORT. Cyprsea shells are woni as a head-dress by the natives of New Guinea. The time would fail in which to tell all the various methods used in applying shells as ornaments to the head, dress, and person. Every book of travels in Africa, America, or the South Sea Islands teems with such illustrations. Nor does India furnish an exception to the rule ; for there the female children have their arms and ankles, from infancy, encircled with broad shell-bauds, cut fi-cni the whorls of the gi-eat TurhineHa 2>(/rum, and the Sepoy troops wear necklaces, made from the canal of tlie same shell, as part of theii l)arade uniform. One hundred and fifty species of living Ci/prtea have been described. They occur in all tlit: warmer seas of the globe, but are mcst abundant in the Old World. The genus Trivia is peculiarly interesting to us, as it includes the only Cowry found upon tin" British coast—the Trivia europwa. The shells of this genus are sometimes covered with transverse raised ribs across the back, as in Trivia europma and T. pedicidus; and sometimes with elevated tubercles, as in T. pustalosa ; or with both, as in 1\ staphykea. Thirty-five species are recorded; they are all small forms. Near the edge, at low water, you may sometimes see our little British Cyprmt. crawling on the sandy bottom. The animal is not more than half an inch long, of a bright orange colour, duskily banded, or yellow with orange edge, or all of a pale pink colour. In front ai-e two slender tentacles, with small black eyes near their bases ; between these horns is a small tube bent upwards—this is the siphon. The shell is wrapped up in the two lobes of the gaily-coloured mantle ; the foot is square in front and very long and pointed behind. At the slightest touch the foot and mantle-lobes, feelers, and siphon all disappear, and the little flesli-coloured ribbed shell alone remains, all the soft parts being contracted
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