in allusion to this custom, of which we are reminded by such English words as _Attestation_, a certifying, a bearing witness; _Testify_, to give evidence; _Testament_, a will, or written disposal of property, etc.; all having their origin, it appears, in the Latin _testa_—a shell. In ancient poetry we find the word _Testudo_ used to signify a musical instrument, also called a lyre or lute, which instrument, according to tradition, was first made by passing strings, and straining them tightly, over the shell of a tortoise. So the poet Dryden, describing those who listened to the music drawn from this simple invention, says— “Less than a God they thought there could not dwell, Within the hollow of that shell That spoke so sweetly.” A Greek writer, called Apollodorus, gives this account of the invention of music by the Egyptian god Hermes, more commonly known as Mercury. The Nile having overflowed its banks, and laid under water the whole country of Egypt, left, when it returned to its usual boundaries, various dead animals on the land; among the rest was a tortoise, the flesh of which being dried and wasted by the sun, nothing remained within the shell except nerves and cartilages, or thin gristly bones; these being shrunk and tightened by the heat, became sonorous, that is sounding. Against this shell Mercury chanced to strike his foot, and pleased by the sound caused thereby, examined the shell from which it came, and so got a notion, as we say, how he might construct a musical instrument. The first which he made was in the form of a tortoise, and strung with the dried sinews of dead animals, even as are the lutes, harps, and fiddles of the present day. This fanciful mode of accounting for the origin of music, is thus alluded to by a writer named Brown:— “The lute was first devised In imitation of a tortoise’ back, Whose sinews parched by Apollo’s beams, Echoed about the concave of the shell; And seeing the shortest and smallest gave shrillest sound; They found out frets, whose sweet diversity Well touched by the skilful learned fingers, Roused so strange a multitude of chords. And the opinion many do confirm, Because _testudo_ signifies a lute.” And now we are among the myths and fables of antiquity, we may just mention another application of the shell to musical purposes. Neptune, who, according to the Grecian mythology, was the god of the sea, is frequently represented as going forth in his car in great state and pomp, with a body-guard of Tritons; some of whom go before with twisted conch shells as trumpets, with which we are to suppose they make delightful harmony. Venus, too, the goddess of beauty, rode on the ocean foam in a testaceous car. Thus Dryden says, that Albion—our native land, so called on account of its chalky cliffs, from the Latin _alba_—white:—