BEAUTIFUL SHELLS. 



WHAT ARE SHELLS ? 



De. Johnson gives us no less than eight different 

 meanings for the word Shell. 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 



