18 Beautiful Shells. 
face, form a fruitful soil for the nourishment of 
vegetation. The character of the testaceous de- 
posits, too, enable geologists (as those who study 
the nature and structure of the earth are termed), 
to come to important conclusions on many points 
connected with the subject of this investigation. 
And if we include, as the subject of our book 
allows, the inhabitants of shells, how wide a field 
of usefulness opens before us. How many thou- 
sands of our industrious population depend wholly, 
or in part, upon the capture and sale of shell-fish 
for their support. In some parts, as the western 
and northern Islands of Scotland, they have in 
times of scarcity afforded sustenance to the dwellers 
on the bleak and barren shores, who but for them 
must have perished. But of all this we shall have 
more to say when we come to describe the different 
members of the testaceous family. We will now 
offer a few remarks upon 
THE INHABITANTS OF SHELLS ; 
Which belong to that division of Natural History 
called the Mollusca, from the Latin Mollis— 
soft; these Molluscous animals, then, are animals 
having a soft body, and no internal skeleton. You 
may be quite sure that a Mollusk will never break 
