Assuming my shell to be Helix virgata, I take down my magnificent French—(let me see if I can write its title without a mistake)—“Manuel de Conchyliologie et de Paléontologie Conchyliologique,” or, in English, “Manual of Shell-talking and Old-body-talking in a Shell-talking manner.” Eight hundred largest octavo—more like folio—pages of close print, with four thousand and odd (nearly five thousand) exquisite engravings of shells; and among them I look for the creatures elegantly, but inaccurately, called by modern naturalists Gasteropods; in English, Belly-feet, (meaning, of course, to say Belly-walkers, for they haven’t got any feet); and among these I find, with much pains, one that is rather like mine, of which I am told that it belongs to the sixteenth sort in the second tribe of the second family of the first sub-order of the second order of the Belly-walkers, and that it is called ‘Adeorbis subcarinatus,’—Adeorbis by Mr. Wood, and subcarinatus by Mr. Montagu; but I am not told where it is found, nor what sort of creature lives in it, nor any single thing whatever about it, except that it is “sufficiently depressed” (“assez déprimée”), and “deeply enough navelled” (assez profondement ombiliquée,—but how on earth can I tell when a shell is navelled to a depth, in the author’s opinion, satisfactory?) and that the turns (taken by the family), are ‘little numerous’ (peu nombreux). On the whole, I am not disposed to think my shell is here described, and put my splendid book in its place again. I next try my English Cuvier, in sixteen octavo volumes; in which I find no notice whatever taken of these minor snails, except a list of thirty-three species, finishing with an etc.; out of which I mark ‘Cretacea,’ ‘Terrestris,’ and ‘Nivea,’ as perhaps likely to fit mine; and then I come, by order of Atropos, on this amazing account of the domestic arrangements of a little French snail, “Helix decollata” (Guillotined snail?) with references to “Cm. Chemn. cxxxvi. 1254–1257,” a species which “has the singular habit of successively fracturing the whorls at the top, (origin, that is,—snails building their houses from heaven towards earth,) of the spire, so that at a particular epoch, of all the whorls of the spire originally possessed by this bulimus, not a single one remains.” Bulimus,—what’s a bulimus? Helix is certainly a screw, and bulimus—in my Riddle’s dictionary—is said to be “empty-bellied.” Then this French snail, revolutionary in the manner of a screw, appears to be a belly-walker with an empty belly, and no neck,—who literally “breaks up” his establishment every year! Query—breaks? or melts? Contraction or confusion?