BEAUTIFUL SHELIS. 
WHAT ARE SHELLS? 
Dr. JoHNsoN gives us no less than eight different 
meanings for the word Suzi. 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 protec- 
tion 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 
