Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Mollusca   Listen
proper noun
Mollusca  n. pl.  (Zool.) One of the grand divisions of the animal kingdom, a phylum including the classes Cephalopoda, Gastropoda, Pteropoda, Scaphopoda, and Pelecyopoda (syn. Bivalvia, formerly called Lamellibranchiata, or Conchifera). These animals have an unsegmented bilateral body, with most of the organs and parts paired, but not repeated longitudinally. Most of them develop a mantle, which incloses either a branchial or a pulmonary cavity. They are generally more or less covered and protected by a calcareous shell, which may be univalve, bivalve, or multivalve. Note: Formerly the Brachiopoda, Bryzoa, and Tunicata were united with the Lamellibranchiata in an artificial group called Acephala, which was also included under Mollusca. See Molluscoidea.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Mollusca" Quotes from Famous Books



... "This mollusca is oblong, and of different sizes, from three to eighteen inches in length; and I have seen a few that were not less than two feet long. They were nearly round, a little flattish on one side, which lies next to the bottom of the sea; and they ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... of varieties, which are confessedly derivative. The proof of the finer gradation appears to be forthcoming. Des Hayes and Lyell have concluded that many of the middle Tertiary and a large proportion of the later Tertiary mollusca are specifically identical with living species; and this is still the almost universally prevalent view. But Mr. Agassiz states that, "in every instance where he had sufficient materials, he had ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... been trying to realize from memory the particular instincts of those antediluvian animals of the secondary period, which succeeding to the mollusca, to the crustacea, and to the fish, preceded the appearance of the race of mammifers. The generation of reptiles then reigned supreme upon the earth. These hideous monsters ruled everything in the seas of the secondary period, which formed the strata of which the Jura mountains are composed. Nature ...
— A Journey to the Centre of the Earth • Jules Verne

... examinations and inquiries, during the voyage. Concerning the nautilus and whale, I learned more through this accomplished seaman than I had ever learned before. The first by examination of the mollusca, which were frequently caught by Captain L. for my accommodation—and of the latter, by oral information received from him (who had been a great whaler) on frequently observing those huge monsters during ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany

... down to the rocks between and among which at low tide the shell fish played in an inch or two of water; and sitting on one of the mossy stones Faith was watching the mimic play of evil passions which was going on among that tribe of Mollusca below her; but her mind ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner

... highest of God's creations; but studied as a mere congeries of facts, all sciences are alike worthless; and from the mousings of the mere antiquarian to the dredgings of the student of the shelly coverings of the Mollusca, all end in naught. ...
— The Elements of Character • Mary G. Chandler

... in conducting a natural history survey of the State through the voluntary labour of its members. To Powell was assigned the department of conchology. This work he entered upon with his usual application and made the most complete collection of the mollusca of Illinois ever brought together by one man. Incidentally, botany, zoology, and mineralogy received attention, and in these lines he secured notable collections. With the broad mental grasp which was a pronounced trait, he perceived that these studies ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... we see another inhabitant of the sea, namely, that beautiful mollusca, the physolida, called by the sailors Portugiesisches Segel-schiff; (Portuguese sailing-ship.) When floating upon the surface of the sea, with its long crest, which it can elevate or depress at pleasure, it really resembles a delicate tiny little sailing vessel. I was very desirous ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer

... attended by conspicuous changes in the miscellaneous properties of the animal. Such well-marked changes take place, for example, where the class Mammalia ends; at the points where Fishes are separated from Insects, Insects from Mollusca, etc. When so formed, the primary natural groups will compose the series by mere juxtaposition, without redistribution; each of them corresponding to a definite portion of the scale. In like manner each family should, if possible, be so subdivided, that one portion of ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill

... joint hosts of the fishes may be the mollusca or other creatures on which they feed, and hence the new fields for Atkinson in Nelson's catches. There is a relative simplicity in the round of life in its higher forms in these regions that would seem ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott

... repeat it with admiration, with reverence to the Creator, these unfortunate creatures, who seem no longer to belong to our species, and not even to the animal species, by the complete annihilation of their intellectual faculties; these incurable beings, who partake more of the mollusca than animated life, and who often thus pass through all the stages of a long existence, are surrounded by tender cares, of which we have no idea. Doubtless it is well to respect the principle of human dignity, even in these unhappy beings who have only ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue

... could be more convenient for the observation of the Mollusca and Radiata than Cape Venus. At a few hundred paces from the shore is a coral reef, which at low water is completely dry. In the shoal water, between the reef and the shore, is found the greatest variety of the more brittle kinds of coral, and among their sometimes thick bushes, mollusca and echinodermes ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue

... retrogression may be in reality a progress, though an interrupted one"; as "when some monarch of the forest loses a limb, it may be replaced by a feeble and sickly substitute." As an instance he mentions the Mollusca, which at an early period had reached a high state of development of forms and species, while in each succeeding age modified species and genera replaced the former ones which had become extinct, and "as we ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... Several groups of the Mollusca, or shell-fish, yield very full and convincing evidence of their descent from earlier and simpler forms, and of these none is of greater interest than the Ammonites, an extinct order of the cephalopoda. The nearest living ally of the ammonites is the pearly ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... all been transferred to one pan in that direction, named Chuantsa; on it we see a cake of salt and lime an inch and a half thick. All the others have an efflorescence of lime and one of the nitrates only, and some are covered thickly with shells. These shells are identical with those of the mollusca of Lake Ngami and the Zouga. There are three ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone

... albuminates, and 96.81 of incombustible residue; I cannot but think that the existence of the albuminates is an error caused by Dr. Schmidt's belief that the Cirripedia were intermediate between Crustacea and Mollusca, in the shells of which latter, the animal basis consists of albuminates. For after placing the valves of Lepas and Pollicipes in cold acid, I found that the membrane left could not be dissolved in boiling caustic potash, but could, though slowly, (and without change of colour,) in boiling muriatic ...
— A Monograph on the Sub-class Cirripedia (Volume 1 of 2) - The Lepadidae; or, Pedunculated Cirripedes • Charles Darwin

... eyes, and some means of smelling and hearing. Commonly the shell has but one valve, but sometimes more. Their shell is secreted or made out of their skin, which is called a mantle. I ought to tell you also, that all these shell-fish have another name, still more general, which is Mollusca, or Molluscs. ...
— Charley's Museum - A Story for Young People • Unknown

... exactly as if in the earliest geological epochs it had been concluded from the flora and fauna then existing that it was impossible for a fauna and flora ever to exist differing from them as widely as do the cryptogams from the conifers, or the mammalia from the mollusca. ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... wear quaint dress. A public crier announces the arrival of their cargoes, which are sold at auction on the beach, often affording picturesque and amusing scenes, sketches of which were made. The luminous appearance of the sea caused by innumerable mollusca affords great pleasure to visitors, twenty thousand of whom every year frequent this ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... equally easy landing. The beach was composed largely of small stones worn smooth by the action of water. There was little sand, though from the deck of the U-33 the beach had appeared to be all sand, and I saw no evidences of mollusca or crustacea such as are common to all beaches I have previously seen. I attribute this to the fact of the smallness of the beach, the enormous depth of surrounding water and the great distance at which Caprona ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... adequately, of the moral power of the imagination: but you may for yourselves enough discern its nature merely by comparing the dignity of the relations between the sexes, from their lowest level in moths or mollusca, through the higher creatures in whom they become a domestic influence and law, up to the love of pure men and women; and, finally, to the ideal love which animated chivalry. Throughout this vast ascent it is the gradual increase of the imaginative faculty ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin



Words linked to "Mollusca" :   Polyplacophora, class Gasteropoda, Gastropoda, Bivalvia, class Pelecypoda, mollusk, class Cephalopoda, Gasteropoda, Animalia, kingdom Animalia, class Gastropoda



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com