104 LIFE AND HER CHILDREN. 
cially because so easily broken. Yet we felt in- 
stinctively that they were more beautiful than any 
artificial toys, and though probably we scarcely 
thought of the animal which formed them, yet the 
delicate marking and tints of colour which each had 
left upon his house, pleased our eye more than gaudy 
pictures or painted playthings. 
And even amongst older people is there any place 
in the world where shells are not admired ? The 
savage strings them into necklaces, and so does the 
refined lady of fashion ; while there is probably not 
a house, even the poorest in England, where they 
do not figure as ornaments, from the giant conchs 
and cowries of the South Seas, brought home by 
some sailor son, to the little boxes made of our 
common coast shells. 
Now each one of these millions of shells pre- 
served in all parts of the world, as well as of the 
countless multitudes which lie crushed and broken 
on the sea-shore and at the bottom of the sea, has 
once been the home of a living animal, which was 
born wrapped in a transparent mantle endowed with 
the wonderful power of extracting lime from the sea- 
water which it has taken into its body, tinting it with 
beautiful colours, and building it up into a solid 
house. 
This wonder-working mantle which life has given 
to these soft-bodied mollusca (mollis, soft) may easily 
be seen in any common shell-inhabiting animal, such 
as the oyster or the periwinkle. When an oyster is 
(BrackiopoJa), are purposely omitted in this chapter, because although 
familiar objects, yet their structure is too difficult and their true position 
too uncertain for them to be dealt with in a book of this kind. 
