The trade in shells is one of extreme antiquity in Ceylon. The Gulf of Manaar has been fished from the earliest times for the large chank shell, _Turbinella_ _rapa_, to be exported to India, where it is still sawn into rings and worn as anklets and bracelets by the women of Hindustan. Another use for these shells is their conversion into wind instruments, which are sounded in the temples on all occasions of ceremony. A chank, in which the whorls, instead of running from left to right, as in the ordinary shell, are reversed, and run from right to left, is regarded with such reverence that a specimen formerly sold for its weight in gold, but one may now be had for four or five pounds. COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, writing in the fifth century, describes a place on the west coast of Ceylon, which he calls Marallo, and says it produced "[Greek: kochlious]," which THEVENOT translates "oysters;" in which case Marallo might be conjectured to be Bentotte, near Colombo, which yields the best edible "oysters" in Ceylon.[1] But the shell in question was most probably the chank, and Marallo was Mantotte, off which it is found in great numbers.[2] In fact, two centuries later Abouzeyd, an Arab, who wrote an account of the trade and productions of India, speaks of these shells by the name they still bear, which he states to be _schenek_[3]; but "schenek" is not an Arabic word, and is merely an attempt to spell the local term, _chank_, in Arabic characters. [Footnote 1: COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, in Thevenot's ed. t i. p. 21.] [Footnote 2: At Kottiar, near Trincomalie, I was struck with the prodigious size of the edible oysters, which were brought to us at the rest-house. The shell of one of these measured a little more than eleven inches in length, by half as many broad: thus unexpectedly attesting the correctness of one of the stories related by the historians of Alexander's expedition, that in India they had found oysters a foot long. PLINY says: "In Indico mari Alexandri rerum auctores pedalia inveniri prodidere."--_Nat. Hist._ lib. xxxii. ch. 31. DARWIN says, that amongst the fossils of Patagonia, he found "a massive gigantic oyster, sometimes even a foot in diameter."--_Nat. Voy._, ch. viii.] [Footnote 3:--ABOUZEYD, _Voyages Arabes,_ &c., t. i. p. 6; REINAUD, _Mémoire sur l'Inde,_ &c p. 222.] BERTOLACCI mentions a curious local peculiarity[1] observed by the fishermen in the natural history of the chank. "All shells," he says, "found to the northward of a line drawn from a point about midway from Manaar to the opposite coast (of India) are of the kind called _patty_, and are distinguished by a short flat head; and all those found to the southward of that line are of the kind called _pajel_, and are known from having a longer and more pointed head than the former. Nor is there ever an instance of deviation from this singular law of nature. The _Wallampory_, or 'right-hand chanks,' are found of both kinds."