374 



CONCEPTION CONCHOLOGY . 



li>lit'd more than forty volumes on this subject. lie 

 died iii 1667. 



CONCEPTION, LA, or PENCO ; a city and sea- 

 port of Chile, on the coast of the South Pacific ocean, 

 capital of a jurisdiction, formerly the capital of Chile ; 

 Ion. 73 5' \V. ; lat, 36 4U' 10 7 S. ; population, 13,000. 

 The bay of Conception is one of the most commodious 

 harbours found in any part of the world. The city 

 is of great extent, because the houses are built only 

 one story high, that they may be the better able 

 to resist the earthquakes that happen every year. It 

 is the residence of the bishop, and of the major-gene- 

 ral, who is at the head of the military department. 

 Conception was founded by Peter Valdivia, in 1550. 

 In 1823 the Indians devastated a part of it. There 

 is not in the universe a soil more fertile than that of 

 this part of Chile. Grain yields sixty for one ; 

 the vineyards are equally productive, and the plains 

 are covered with innumerable flocks, which multiply 

 astonisliingly, though abandoned entirely to them- 

 selves. All the inhabitants have to do is to set up 

 fences round their respective possessions, and to 

 leave the oxen, horses, mules, and sheep in the en- 

 closures. The common price of a fat ox is eight dol- 

 lars; tliat of a sheep three-fourths of a dollar; but there 

 are few purcliasers, and the natives are accustomed, 

 every year, to kill a great number of oxen, of which 

 tlie hides and tallow are alone preserved, and sent 

 to Lima. There is no particular disease incident to 

 this country. There are at Conception several per- 

 sons who have completed a century. 



CONCERT ; a musical performance, in which 

 any number of practical musicians, either vocal or 

 instrumental, or both, unite in the exercise of their 

 respective talents. The concerts of the ancient 

 Greeks were executed only in the unison or octave. 



CONCERTO; a kind of musical composition, 

 which is an imitation of the solo song with accom- 

 paniments in short, an imitation of the aria. In 

 the concerto, one chief instrument is distinguished, 

 and leads the rest. In the case of such concertos, 

 the performance is called after this instrument, or it 

 is called, in general, concerto di camera. The term dou- 

 ble concerto is used if there are two chief instruments. 



Concerto grosso is an expression applied to the 

 great or grand chorus of the concert, or to those 

 places of the concert in which the ripienos and every 

 auxiliary instrument are brought into action, for the 

 sake of contrast and to increase the effect. 



Concerto apirituale was a concert at Paris, perform- 

 ed in the religious seasons, when the theatres were 

 closed. The pieces performed, however, were not 

 always of a spiritual kind. It was introduced in 

 1725, by Anne Danican, called Philidor. 



CONCETTI; sparkling but strained sentences,, 

 far-fetched plays on words, &c., which have become 

 famous, in particular since the use of them by the 

 Italian poet Marino. The taste for them is a disease 

 which lias manifested itself in the development of 

 almost all literatures. The Spaniards and British 

 suffered from it for a long time. Marino, who in- 

 troduced them into Italy, caught this poetical infec- 

 tion in France, where a poet called the wind the 

 courier of^Eolus, the sun the prince of tapers. Ger- 

 many has had its Lohenstein ; and, even now, there 

 are, in every country, writers afflicted with tliis 

 passion for a false brilliancy. 



CONCHOLOGY (derived from i y ^,, a shell- 

 fish with two shells, and liyo;, word), more correct- 

 ly, CONCHYLIOLOGY (derived from x.oyx\>>.ni, all sorts 

 of shell-fish, and xyf), is that branch of natural 

 history which describes those animals which produce 

 shells, and teaches the art of arranging the shells ' 

 themselves. 



The beginnings of this science are to be found in the j 



writings of Aristotle, who established some of those 

 divisions which are in use among modern authors. He 

 divided shells into monot/iyra and dithyra ; that is, 

 univalves and bivalves. The monothyra were turbi- 

 nated, or not turbinated ; they were terrestrial or 

 aquatic; both were marine or fluviatile, fixed or 

 free. To the facts recorded by Aristotle, other 

 ancient authors have added little ; to his distribution, 

 nothing. The first modern author who attempted a 

 systematic arrangement of shells, seems to have been 

 Daniel Major, who, in 1675, published Synoptical 

 Tables, containing a few Genera, naturally arranged, 

 and established upon the species described by Fabri- 

 cius Columna. He divided shells into univalves 

 and multivalves, placing the bivalves among the lat- 

 ter. In 1681, Grew, in his Musceum Regium, added 

 a division analogous to our bivalves, and indicated 

 most of the subdivisions that liave since obtained. 

 About 1687, the celebrated Lister published his His- 

 torite sive Synopsis Methodicee CoHC/iyliorum, Libri 

 quatuor. This work contains a great number of 

 accurate figures of shells, pays great attention to the 

 hinge of bivalves, and considers them as equivalve or 

 not. Toumefort, who died in 1708, seems to have 

 first suggested, in bivalves, the distinction of close or 

 gaping (clausa vel Mantes). In 1711, Rumph added 

 to the conchyliological catalogue many shells from 

 the Indian seas, and indicated some good generic 

 divisions. In 1730, Breyn pointed out a character 

 in univalves, until then not noticed; namely, that 

 some of them possess more than one compartment or 

 chamber. This character divides the univalves into 

 monotha lamia and polythalamia. After 1730, no im- 

 provements of much value were made in the science, 

 until 1757, in which year the publication of Adan- 

 son's Voyage to Senegal took place, and probably 

 suggested many considerations, that became fixed 

 principles of conchyliology by the adoption of Lin- 

 nasus. In studying the univalves (limawtis), Adanson 

 considered the spire, the apex, the aperture, the oper- 

 culum, the nacre, the periosteum ; in the bivalves 

 (contfues), the valves, whether equal or unequal, 

 whether shutting close or gaping ; the beaks (som- 

 mets), whether prominent or not, and according to 

 their relative position with respect to the middle of 

 the valve ; the hinge, according to the number of the 

 teeth and cavities ; the ligament, according to its 

 shape and situation ; the muscles, according to their 

 figure, size, and number. In forming his conchylio- 

 logical arrangement, Adanson adopted an important 

 principle, which Guettard had suggested one year 

 before, namely, that the consideration of the animal 

 is as necessary as that of the shell, in order to form 

 a natural system ' of conchyliology. He described 

 and figured the different species of shell-fish that he 

 found in Senegal, and thereby formed a store from 

 which the most valuable materials have been drawn 

 by later authors to enrich the science. 



Contemporary with Adanson was the celebrated 

 Linnasus, whose genius has exercised such great in- 

 fluence over the arrangements of the vegetable and 

 animal kingdoms. The ninth edition of the Systema JVa- 

 tiirce of Linnasus was published in 1746, eleven years 

 before the appearance of Adanson's work, forming 

 only an octavo volume of 236 pages, in which Lin- 

 naeus does not appear to have used the term mollus- 

 ca, the animals now thus designated being distribut- 

 ed by him, the naked species in the order zoophyta, 

 in the class vermes, and the species bearing shells in 

 the order testacea, of the same class. The tenth 

 edition, which appeared in 1758, one year after the 

 publication of the Voyage to Senegal, was much 

 enlarged ; and in the twelfth edition, which may be 

 supposed to have received the last touches of its illus- 

 trious author, the part relating to the animal kuig- 



