Gabriel!!!! (you're not reading my BLOG!!!!) The Conchologist's Text-Book, 1833, by Cap'n Thomas Brown, which I ordered for the Library a few weeks ago, has arrived!!! This is the Volume that someone calling himself "Edgar Allan Poe" (re)published in Philadelphia, giving Himself as Author!!!!

I quote from page 48:

Helix arbustorum - The Grove Helix.  Plate IX. 
fig.22.  Sub-glubose, sub-pellucid, with five volutions; mottled 
with ash-colour, and streaked with deep chestnut zigzag lines; 
a single deep brown band commences at the edge of the outer 
lip, and continues round the middle of the body and the 
volutions to the apex; 3/4ths of an inch in diameter.  
Inhabits groves in Britain.

EAP clearly ripped off the sexiest book in the English language.

Gabriel Gudding might be interested in the following, if he doesn't already know about it. I just ordered a rare book from Scotland for the library, titled A Conchologist's Text-book, by Captain Thomas Brown, published in Glasgow in 1833.

In doing so I noticed that the library already owned the following, "published for the author by Haswell, Barrington & Haswell" in Philadelphia, in 1839 : The conchologist's first book; or, A system of testaceous melacology, arranged expressly for the use of schools, in which the animals, according to Cuvier, are given with the shells, a great number of new species added, and the whole brought up, as accurately as possible, to the present condition of the science. The said author is listed as EDGAR ALLAN POE. A note to the library record : "Stated by R.W. Griswold, in the International Monthly Magazine, Oct. 1850, to be a copy nearly verbatim, of the text-book of conchology by Captain Thomas Brown, printed in Glasgow in 1833."

Was one of Eddy's heteronyms a certain Captain Brown?

I've been enjoying G.Gudding's adventures in conchology. Here's an early poem by Mandelstam, trans. by Clarence Brown. Last line reminds me of the old song from Twelfth Night.

THE SEASHELL

Perhaps I am not necessary to you,
Night; out of the universal gulf
Like a shell without pearls
I am cast up on your shore.

You froth the waves indifferently
And obstinately sing.
But you will love and know the worth
Of the lie of the useless shell.

You will lie down on the sand beside it
Will cover it with your chasuble
You will bind to it inseparably
The enormous bell of the billows.

And the walls of the fragile shell,
Like the house of an empty heart,
You will fill with the whispers of foam,
With fog, wind and the rain. . .