Beautiful shells

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.


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.”