WEST AMERICAN SHELLS 
CHAPTER I 
LAMP-SHELLS AND THEIR ALLIES 
We begin our description of the West American 
shells by inviting your attention to a class that 
very properly carries our thoughts far back into 
the dim ages of the past. Long before the first 
man that ever stood upon the seashore reached 
down to the sand and took up a shell, long before 
the sand upon which he was standing had been 
ground up from the solid rock by the great mill of 
the ocean, long before even the rocks themselves 
had been raised above the surface of the primeval 
sea, In those ancient days when a broad ocean 
spread over the place where continents are now 
dotted by human abodes, and corals were building 
reefs where men are now building cities,— then, 
in countless millions the Brachiopods lived, mul- 
tiphed, and died, leaving their shells to be formed 
into limestone or to be preserved in the rocks, until 
many ages later they should be gathered as rare 
fossils for the naturalist’s cabinet. 
As time went on the brachiopods gradually 
decreased in numbers, other creatures taking their 
places, until at present they are rarely taken alive, 
though in some of the colder parts of the ocean and 
in tolerably deep water they are sometimes found 
in considerable numbers. 
