BEAUTIFUL SHELLS: THEIR NATURE, STRUCTURE, AND USES FAMILIARLY EXPLAINED; WITH DIRECTIONS FOR COLLECTING, CLEANING, AND ARRANGING THEM IN THE CABINET; DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MOST REMARKABLE SPECIES, AND OF THE CREATURES WHICH INHABIT THEM; AND EXPLANATIONS OF THE MEANINGS OF THEIR SCIENTIFIC NAMES, AND OF THE TERMS USED IN CONCHOLOGY. BY H. G. ADAMS, _Author of “Nests and Eggs of Familiar British Birds,” “Beautiful Butterflies,” “Favourite Song Birds,” “A Story of the Seasons,” &c. &c._ ILLUSTRATED WITH NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS & COLOURED PLATES. LONDON: GROOMBRIDGE AND SONS, 5, PATERNOSTER ROW. M DCCC LVI. INTRODUCTION. WHAT ARE SHELLS? Dr. Johnson gives us no less than eight different meanings for the word SHELL. First, he calls it ‘The hard covering of anything; the external crust.’ Second, ‘The covering of a testaceous or crustaceous animal.’ And here we may stop, for this is just the signification which has to do with our subject; so let us turn the sentence inside out, and see what we can make of it. We all know what a covering is—an outer coat, a case, a protection from injury, a husk, a crust, a—in short, a shell,—_scyll_ or _scell_, as our Saxon forefathers called it; _schale_, as the Germans now term it. No Latin nor Greek here, but the good old Saxon tongue, somewhat rough and rugged, perhaps, but stout and sturdy, and honest and serviceable; a kind of language to stand wear and tear, like a pair of hob-nailed shoes, with little polish, but useful, yes, very useful! Well, we have got so far, now comes a hard word—TES-TA-CE-OUS, what can it mean? It is pronounced _tes-ta-shus_, comes from the Latin _testaceus_—having a Shell, and means consisting of, or composed of shells; so we find that a _testacean_ is a shell-fish, and _testaceology_ is the science of shells. Johnson’s second meaning of the word _testaceous_ is ‘Having continuous, not jointed shells, opposed to crustaceous.’ So we find that some naturalists call those testaceous fish, “whose strong and thick shells are entire and of a piece, because those which are joined, as the lobsters, are crustaceous.”