Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14131

    Shell specimens

    Date
    1776
    Creator
    Peter Brown (1758 - 1799, British) , Illustrator
    Object type
    Library reference
    55207
    Dimensions
    height (print): 199mm
    width (print): 270mm
    Subject
    Content object
    nature
       > landscape
          > shell
    Description
    Conchological study of nine shell types. Includes, in some cases, depictions of their external and internal surfaces.

    Figures one and two: The Cowry Shell (Cypraeidae)
    Figure three: The Weavers Shuttle Shell, a type of east Indian Univalve (Radius volva)
    Figures four and five: The Dipper Shell, also a type of Univalve (Radius volva)
    Figure six: The Paper Nautilis Shell (Argonauta argo)
    Figures seven and eight: The Venus Ear Shell (Haliotis spadicea)
    Figure nine: listed as the ‘Cochlea Strombiformis’, appears to depict a high spired shell (Turritella communis)
    Figure ten: The Gastropod Shell (Cochlea Helix)
    Figures eleven, twelve, fourteen and fifteen – Nerite Shells (Neritidae)
    Figure thirteen – A Trochus Shell (Tectus niloticus)

    Plate three from Emanuel Mendes da Costa’s book ‘Elements of conchology: or, an introduction to the knowledge of shells’ 1776. Inscribed above: ‘PL. III’

    Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717-1791) naturalist was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1747.

    Peter Brown (active 1758-1799) British naturalist and natural history illustrator illustrated Mendes da Costa's Elements of conchology.
    Object history
    Volume donated to the Royal Society by Ronald Winckworth, British natural historian, 1942.
    Related fellows
    Emanuel Mendes da Costa (1717 - 1791) , Naturalist
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