CHANGELING, It was at one time a common superstition, that infants were taken from their cradles by fairies, who left instead their own weakly and starveling elves. The children so left were called changelings, and were known by their peevishness, and their backwardness in walking and speaking. As it was supposed that the fairies had no power to change children that had been christened, infants were carefully watched until such time a.5 that ceromony had 'been performedJ This superstition is alluded to by Shakespeare, Spenser, and other poets; and it has not yet quite died out of some of the rural districts in Britain.
a city of China, capital of the province of Hoo-nan, in 28° 20' n.
lat.
the popular name of the shell of several species of turbinella, a genus of gasteropodous mollusks of the group siphonostomata (q.v.), natives of the East Indian seas. These shells are obtained chiefly on the coasts of the s. of India and Ceylon, and
form a considerable article of trade to Calcutta. They are much used as ornaments by Hindu women, the arms and legs being encircled with them; and many of them are buried with the bodies of opulent persons. Those which are thrown up on the beach, after the death of the mollusk, and have become whitened, are little valued, but fresh shells readily find purchasers. The commercial returns show an exportation of chank shells from Madras amounting to 2,460,727 in one year, 1S53-54, the value of which was about £10,000. The quantity ordinarily exported is smaller. A chank-shell open ing to the right is rare, and is highly prized in Calcutta, so that a price of £50, or even £100, is sometimes paid for one.