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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








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"Mollusca" Quotes from Famous Books



... animal which belongs to a vast assemblage of species, with much variety of form and structure, which, on account of their soft bodies (whether or not enclosed in shells), are called MOLLUSCA or "Mollusks." This assemblage ranks as a sub-kingdom and contains within it at least four subordinate great groups, or "classes." All snails and whelks, with their allies, and also all cuttle-fishes, belong to ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various

... literally or metaphorically, leaderless. The word is used literally in biology; and metaphorically in prosody or grammar for a verse or sentence with a beginning wanting. In zoology, the mollusca are divided into cephalous and acephalous (Acephala), according as they have or have not an organized part of their anatomy as the seat of the brain and special senses. The Acephala, or Lamellibranchiata (q.v.), are commonly known as bivalve shell-fish. In botany the word is used for ovaries ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of the Mesozoic sea-bottom into a westward extension of the Mesozoic continent, over which the mammalian fauna, by which it was already peopled, gradually spread. This invasion of the land was prefaced by a previous invasion of the Cretaceous sea by modern forms of mollusca and fish. ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley

... on his arrival upon the earth was necessarily to make sure of food. Wild berries, acorns, and ephemeral grasses only last for a time, whilst land mollusca and insects, forming but a miserable diet at the best, disappear during the winter. Meat must certainly have been the chief food of prehistoric man; the accumulations of bones of all sorts in the caves and other places ...
— Manners and Monuments of Prehistoric Peoples • The Marquis de Nadaillac

... extends appears to be extremely improbable. The lava seems to have been poured, during a long succession of ages, over a land surface, uneven and broken in parts, 'with intervals of rest sufficient for lakes, stocked with fresh- water mollusca, to form on the cold surfaces of several of the lava- flows' (Holland, in I.G. (1907), i. 88). A great tract of the volcanic region appears to have remained almost undisturbed to the present day, affected by sub-aerial erosion ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman


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