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76 CLASSIFICATION OF SHELLS :
spoke to us the other day of the little purple-ocean snail-shell, I formed a much better idea of it than if you had called it by some Latin name, which I could not understand."
" And yet, my dear, if you had wished to find this shell, and place it among your collection, the name by which I called it would have been of little assistance to you ; for there are other small purple shells, which you might very likely have mistaken for the one in question : and, perhaps, the first person you asked about it, would have told you it was something quite different. Had you been in a foreign land, the English name would have been useless; and, indeed, even in various parts of our own country, things are called by |
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