A Conchological Manual |
|
Author:
| Sowerby, George Brettingham |
ISBN: | 978-0-217-33527-0 |
Publication Date: | Jul 2012 |
Publisher: | General Books LLC
|
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | AUD $27.90 |
Book Description:
|
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: On account of these and other considerations, it has been thought advisable that the present undertaking should bear a purely conchological character. The peculiarities of the shells alone being detailed for the assistance of those who collect and study them, while at the same time, in deciding upon their...
More DescriptionPurchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: On account of these and other considerations, it has been thought advisable that the present undertaking should bear a purely conchological character. The peculiarities of the shells alone being detailed for the assistance of those who collect and study them, while at the same time, in deciding upon their affinities and places, in the arrangement, it will be necessary to take advantage of the conclusion to which those have arrived, who have studied the animal in all its parts. And the conviction must be expressed, that if ever a complete Natural System shall be formed it will result from the labours of the last mentioned class of naturalists. DEFINITION OF A SHELL. Before entering minutely into the description of shells, it will be necessary to distinguish from the true testaceous Mollusca two kinds of animals which have formerly been associated with them. Of these, the first is the class of Crustacea, consisting of crabs, crayfish, andc. These differ from shell-fish, not only in structure and chemical composition, but also in the fact that the animal has jointed limbs, and that the substance of the flesh is inseparable from the hard external covering, which invests each particular joint as with a sheath; whereas the Molluscous animal is but partially attached to its shell, from which it possesses the power of partly withdrawing and returning. The second class is that to which the sea-urchin, or Echinus, belongs, of which there are many genera and species. The testaceous covering of Echini is composed of a number of small pieces, placed edge to edge, forming a more or less globular external covering to the flesh, which is supported in the centre by a number of bones leaning upon each other in a pyramidal form. The test is of a fibrous texture, guarded on the outside with mov...