1 6 MOLLUSKS. 



gills, and his curious foot, with its transverse muscles; 

 but the tide has turned, and we had better be getting 

 ashore, since we belong to a class of air-breathing 

 animals, and are wholly unprovided with gills. We 

 will only stop to observe that this animal has no 

 bones, but is soft in all its parts, except its teeth and 

 shell ; hence, it is called a mollusk, which name is 

 derived from the Latin mollis, meaning soft. 



Because it crawls upon its stomach, or ventral sur- 

 face, as we would say, it is called a Gasteropod, from 

 the Greek words meaning stomach-footed. 



Nearly all the names of shells are derived from the 

 Latin or the Greek. These names may sound rather 

 barbarous to us, but no more so than if they were 

 written in German or Russian. Why not write them 

 in English, then? 



A fair question, surely, and if English was univer- 

 sally spoken, it might be hard to find a satisfactory 

 answer. But an English name, to a Russian, would 

 be as bad as a Russian name to you, and since the 

 Latin language is studied by scholars of all nations, 

 and since scientific names should all be written in one 

 language, there is no doubt that the Latin tongue is 

 best adapted for this purpose. 



There are different methods of pronouncing Latin, 

 but as some of my readers may not be acquainted 

 with that language, and may like to know at least 

 one way to pronounce the names, I shall indicate the 

 pronunciation according to the English system, by 

 which you pronounce a Latin word as you naturally 

 would if it were an English one spelled in the same 

 way. If you are a Latin scholar, and prefer to pro- 

 nounce by the Roman or the Continental method, you 

 may be sure that very many will agree with you, and 

 certainly I shall find no fault. 



