or conchology; and both of us spent hours every week in classifying
and arranging our respective collections, not to speak of the time we
devoted to hunting for specimens. Eddy had a green net at the end of
a stick, and became very skilful in making his captures; and how we
triumphed over a "swallow-tail," so difficult to catch, or an unfamiliar
species! Eddy had his pins and his strips of cork, and paper boxes;
and his collections certainly were fairer to look upon, to the ordinary
view, than mine; moreover, his was the more scientific mind and the
nicer sense of order. For the display of my snail-shells I used bits of
card-board and plenty of gum-arabic; and I was affluent in "duplicates,"
my plan being to get a large card and then cover it with specimens of
the shell, in serried ranks. I also called literature to my aid, and
produced several little books containing labored descriptions of my
collection, couched, so far as possible, in the stilted and formal
phraseology of the conchological works to which I had access, but with
occasional outbursts after a style of my own. Here is a chapter from one
of them; a pen-and-ink portrait of the shell is prefixed to the original
essay:

"CLAUSILIA BUBIGUNIA

"This handsome and elegant little shell is found in mossy places, or
in old ruins, such as the Coliseum--where it is found in immense
numbers--or the Palace of the Caesars. But in Italy it is common in any
mossy ruin, in the small, moss-covered holes, where it is seen at the
farthest extremity. After a rain they always crawl out of their places
of concealment in such numbers that one would think it had been raining
clausilias. The shell, in large and fine specimens, is five-eighths of
an inch in length. The young are very small and look like the top part
of the spire of the adults. This shell is also largest in the middle,
shaped something like a grain of wheat. It has nine whorls, marked by
small white lines, which look like fine white threads of sewing-cotton;
and just below them are marks which look like very fine and very small
stitches of white cotton. The color of the shell, down to next to
the last whorl, is a brown color, but the very last whorl is a little
lighter. The shell is covered all over with fine lines, but they need
to be looked at through a magnifying-glass, they are so fine. The lip
is turning out, and very thin; inside there are three ridges, two on the
top part of the mouth, and the other, which is